There’s a heady article over at THR.com that details a pending lawsuit against a planned Morgan Creek crime drama to be written by Nicholas Pileggi and to be directed by Antoine Fuqua that deals with the life story of former Colombo crime family hit man, Gregory “The Grim Reaper” Scarpa. In a situation that looks like it could have developed from one of Pileggi’s own scripts, former mistress Linda Schiro and her daughter by Scarpa, “Little Linda” Schiro, are seeking an injunction against the project due to a disagreement over payment for their parts in the story. The Schiros allege that there was a contract in place to receive $150,000 for their interviews to Fuqua and Pileggi, their life rights and jobs as consultants on the film.
Gregory Scarpa was a notorious family capo who allegedly carried out dozens of hits over three decades on
behalf of Colombo family honcho Junior Persico before dying in
prison in 1994. He also allegedly had a relationship with a corrupt
FBI agent named Lindley DeVecchio. Scarpa was also an informant for the FBI for three decades and, in one unconfirmed story, was paid by J. Edgar Hoover to fly to Mississippi and force a Klan member to reveal the location of the Mississippi Three murder victims. He and his family also survived an assassination attempt on November 18, 1991 by supporters of rival gangster, Victor Orena, who tried to run up on Scarpa’s car with guns Black Caesar-style.
Schiro’s attorney, Perry Wander stated that Morgan Creek reneged on a deal that had been put in place. “Morgan Creek made said promises with the intent to defraud
plaintiffs, and for the purpose of inducing plaintiffs to rely upon
said promises by providing interviews with the producers,
screenwriter and director,” the suit alleges. Morgan Creek isn’t seeing things exactly the same way, and they say that the lawsuit won’t slow down the process of making the film, as Pileggi and Fuqua are moving ahead with their plans to make it. Nicolas Cage and Ethan Hawke are reportedly in talks to play Scarpa and an FBI agent respectively; and Cage is said to have an $11 million pay-or-play deal on the project.
I hope that things do come together for this because it sounds like it could be a good crime pic. Regardless of how things work out, though, I’d be interested if for no other reason than to see Cage in that Scarpa get up in the picture.