Crash co-writer Bobby Moresco has been set by producer Joseph Isgro to write a film about organized crime patriarch Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, reports Variety.
Isgro, a former independent record promoter who was once accused, but cleared, of ties to the Gambino clan, is assembling the equity financing for the $35 million budget and will produce through his Full Force Productions.
The film is about Luciano’s rise from Lower East Side street hood to architect of the organized crime syndicate.
A big part of the story is how the government put Luciano away on a 30-year stretch for pimping and pandering and then leveraged his cooperation in America’s WWII efforts with the promise of a pardon. Moresco said that Luciano used his mob clout on the New York docks to root out spies whose reports of ship movement to Nazi U-boats led to the sinking of more than 250 ships. Luciano also arranged for safe passage when troops landed in Sicily.
