Emily Blunt Calls Martin Scorsese’s Next Movie “The Last Great American Mob Story,” Hypes Dwayne Johnson’s Role
Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson are keeping their creative partnership alive after The Smashing Machine, and their next collaboration is shaping up to be something pretty big.
The pair are set to team with legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese for a mob drama that Blunt describes as “the last great American mob story.”
At the premiere of A24’s The Smashing Machine earlier this week, Blunt teased what’s next for her and Johnson. “
We’re developing it right now. It’s a really astonishing story,” she told Deadline. “It’s the last great American mob story, and I can’t believe it hasn’t been told yet.
“It’s a terribly exciting role for [Johnson] to kind of dig into. So, it’s being written, we’re working on it. And that’s the wonderful part, is building it.”
Scorsese himself reportedly described the film as a Hawaiian-set Goodfellas. Written by Nick Bilton, the story will center on a real-life Hawaiian crime boss, Wilford “Nappy” Pulawa, who led The Company in the 1970s.
Pulawa’s reign was defined by violence, power struggles, and a brutal fight against rivals including triads and even the U.S. military. His organization controlled rackets from gambling and labor corruption to human and drug trafficking.
Eventually, Pulawa faced charges for multiple murders but was ultimately sentenced to 15 years in prison for tax evasion in 1973, later released in 1984. In 1975, he was permanently banned from Nevada casinos.
His bloody rise and fall is the kind of material Scorsese has built his career on, and seeing Johnson step into a character compared to Robert De Niro’s in Goodfellas makes this an especially intriguing project.
The film brings together a powerhouse producing team that includes Scorsese, Johnson, Blunt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Bilton, Dany Garcia, Lisa Frechette, and LBI Entertainment’s Rick Yorn and Chris Donnelly.
A Hawaiian mob epic directed by Scorsese, starring Johnson and Blunt, and DiCaprio sounds like an incredibly ambitious gangster film.