AP Photo/ Louis Lanzano, File
Movies and TV shows about the mob are nothing new. But it surely can’t get more on the money than when the source is as impeccably placed as this one.
The 46-year-old John “Junior” Gotti has sold the rights to his life story to fledgling independent production company Fiore Films. The son of the Gambino crime family leader, the late “Dapper Don” John Gotti, was released from prison last December after serving a nine year sentence for racketeering (he’s since been working on a book and a screenplay with actor-writer Leo Rossi.) “It’s going to be filmed in New York, I’ve been working on it in New York, we can be an active player in the situation from start to finish,” Gotti said in a rare interview with the Associated Press. “They were willing to hear my thoughts and they assured me the script would be absolutely accurate, the script would be fair.”
Fiore Films claims that Sylvester Stallone is among those who’ve expressed interest in getting involved both as director and star. As for Gotti, he’s nothing if not keen to make sure that this movie of his family’s life and times lays to rest previous film failures in his eyes (“The opportunity presented itself to clear up a lot of inaccuracies”) and emphasizes that it shouldn’t be viewed as a mafia movie. “This is not a mob story,” he said. “That’s one misconception. This is a father-son story.”
And if you’ve been wondering whether Gotti has watched the perceived highmarks of mafia popular culture to date, The Sopranos and The Godfather, he hasn’t seen the former but appreciates the fascination with the movie trilogy — well, at least, the first two films. That’s right: even John Gotti thinks The Godfather: Part III sucks.