Johnny Depp to play mobster 'Whitey' Bulger

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/feb/04/johnny-depp-to-play-whitey-bulger

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Johnny Depp is being lined up to play the notorious Irish American mobster James "Whitey" Bulger in a new biopic from Rain Man and Bugsy director Barry Levinson, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The inspiration for Jack Nicholson's character Frank Costello in Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning The Departed, Bulger was arrested in Santa Monica in June 2011 after being on the run for 15 years. At the time he was wanted for 19 murders and had been on the FBI's most-wanted list for 16 years: the reward for his capture was reportedly second only in size to that offered for information leading to the arrest of Osama bin Laden.

Levinson's film, to be titled Black Mass, will be based on the New York Times bestseller Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob, by Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill. Bulger is one of the FBI's most infamous informants, having been recruited in the 1970s to help bring down an Italian American Boston mob named the Patriarca crime family, which had rivalled his organisation in New England. In return, the FBI turned a blind eye as the gangster cemented his rule over the region's criminal enterprises, until the deal and Bulger's reign of terror were eventually exposed by the Boston media. Bulger went on the run in 1994 after being tipped off by his former handler that a prosecution was looming. He reportedly travelled the world using cash sums stashed in safe deposit boxes before finally being captured in California at the age of 81.

Black Mass, which is based on a screenplay by Inside Man writer Russell Gewirtz, appears to be out of the gates ahead of a rival Whitey Bulger biopic starring Matt Damon, which was to be directed by his fellow Oscar winner Ben Affleck. Variety reported in October 2011 that the two – joint winners of the 1998 best original screenplay Oscar for Good Will Hunting – were to reunite on the project. Damon told GQ: "We're doing a Whitey Bulger movie. There are a couple of competing movies and I don't think it's been announced yet that we're doing it." However, since then, little has been heard about the project. A proposed third Bulger biopic, based on the book Street Soldier: My Life As an Enforcer for Whitey Bulger and the Boston Irish Mob, may also have fallen by the wayside.