Michael Mann & Sheldon Turner Developing BIG TUNA

Michael Mann has joined forces with Sheldon Turner to develop his next crime story called Big Tuna. Turner will write the screenplay for this biopic about Chicago mob boss Tony Accardo and Sam Giancana, the protege that replaced him. Mann is paying Turner's seven-figure fee from his own development fund since Big Tuna has yet to be paired with a studio.

Big Tuna is just one of several films that may be the followup to last year's Public Enemies.  Mann also directed the pilot episode of David Milch's gambling drama Luck for HBO, which airs next year.  

Mann has also been considering directing a medieval film based on Bernard Cornwell's bestseller Agincourt.  The film is about the bloody battle of Agincourt, between England and France which took place in 1415.

Turner is best known for co-writing Up in the Air with Jason Reitman.  He is writing Big Tuna while he is prepping for his directorial debut on the revenge drama By Virtue Fall starring Colin Farrell and Eric Bana coming early next year.

He is very busy lately and has a number of big projects in the works, including producing the romantic comedy Kiss and Tell for Universal and Man Camp at Sony.  Turner and Klein are also producing Paths of Glory at Sony, Orbit with Fox 2000 and Two Minutes to Midnight at Fox, all of which Turner wrote.

If that was not enough, Klein and Turner have four TV projects set up at NBC, ABC, CBS and FX.  It is amazing how a successful film like Up In The Air can really snowball into a huge amount of other projects.  We will continue to keep you in the loop on this and all of the projects mentioned.