Goodfellas meets in The Departed in paradise.
Just when you thought that today could not any
better, news is spreading that the legendary director
Martin Scorsese, Academy Award-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio,
former wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and British bombshell
Emily Blunt are all teaming up to make a Hawaii crime drama.
Deadline is
reporting:
The film focuses on a turbulent time on the island paradise
when an aspiring mob boss battled rival crime factions to wrest
control of the underworld of the Hawaiian islands. It was a bloody
battle, the kind of terrain Scorsese covered in both Goodfellas and
The Departed. In 1960s and 70s Hawaii, this formidable and
charismatic mob boss rises to build the islands’ most powerful
criminal empire, waging a brutal war against mainland corporations
and rival syndicates while fighting to preserve his ancestral land.
It’s based on the untold true story of a man who fought to preserve
his homeland through a ruthless quest for absolute power — igniting
the last great American mob saga, where the war for cultural
survival takes place in the unlikeliest of places:
paradise.
Very cool but maybe not as cool as a book released twelve years
ago, now, that provided an “unflinching look at the
high-stakes world of surfing on Oahu’s North Shore—a riveting,
often humorous, account of beauty, greed, danger, and crime.”
Ah yes.
Back to the Scorsese-DiCaprio-Johnson-Blunt joint, though, word
around town is that a fierce bidding war is currently underway to
make it with a projected budget of $200,000,000. Netflix is
currently the odds-on favorite to win. The losers can comfort
themselves, though, by bidding on another Hawaii story about an
“exciting and dangerous place where locals, outsiders, the surf
industry, and criminal elements clash. A fascinating look at class,
race, power, money, and crime, set within one of the most beautiful
places on earth. The result is a breathtaking blend of crime and
adventure that captures the allure and wickedness of this idyllic
golden world.”
