Italy’s Most Wanted Mafia Boss Set For High-End Movie Following Arrest After 30 Years on the Run
variety.comNick Vivarelli International Correspondent The story of Italy’s most-wanted Mafia boss, Matteo Messina Denaro, whose recent arrest by police in Palermo after 30 years on the run made global headlines, is set to become a big-budget film.
Rome-based producer Marco Belardi (“Perfect Strangers”) has acquired rights to ace anti-Mafia journalist Lirio Abbate’s book about the Cosa Nostra boss.
The book is titled “U Siccu,” which is Sicilian dialect that translates as “The Skinny One.” Messina Denaro was arrested in mid-January by dozens of police officers outside an upscale medical facility in Palermo where he had been undergoing cancer treatment for a year under false identity.
Belardi’s company Bamboo Productions has announced plans for the tale of this elusive top mafioso, convicted of masterminding some of Italy’s most heinous slayings – including the killings of prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, and the grisly murder of a Mafia turncoat’s young son, who was strangled before his body was dissolved in a vat of acid – to become “a major motion picture” directed by a still unspecified top Italian helmer, it said in a statement.
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