“An Education” director Lone Scherfig is set to take the helm on the Jessica Biel crime drama vehicle, “Mob Girl,” according to Pajiba.
The film will reportedly be based on Teresa Carpenter’s non-fiction work of the same name and follows the true story of mob mistress, Arlyne Brickman, who infiltrated the mafia and eventually turned valuable evidence to the state leading to the arrest and incarceration of family-head, Anthony Scarpati. Here’s a synopsis of the book:
From an early age, Arlyn Brickman associated with petty and some not so petty racketeering figures, starting with her grandmother and father. Intoxicated by the glamour and flash, she made herself “indispensable” to wiseguys by running errands, carrying packages, or offering her home as a meeting place or safe haven–not to mention the dozens of mob figures with whom she slept. Before long, she vaulted from an adjunct role into the thick of bookmaking, loansharking, and drug dealing.
Over a 30-year career, she had eight abortions and endured beatings, humiliations, and a brutal rape, eventually becoming a government informant and witness. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carpenter has done a superb rendering of Brickman’s story. She goes far beyond naming names and retelling events as she digs into Brickman’s underlying motivations and vividly re-creates Brickman’s exhilaration over her triumphs and pain over her defeats in her pursuit of the mob girl lifestyle.
Though she’s obviously know for the coming-of-age drama, “An Education,” which has turned Carey Mulligan into an A-list star, the gear change isn’t that surprising as she previously had expressed a desire to “break into action by doing a gangster movie” — this mob pic seemingly being the project she had her eyes on all along.
“Exploring the criminal mind is truly interesting and something I haven’t done,” Scherfig added. “I’m interested in someone more violent and more flawed.”
While writers are only now being sought to develop script, the project does sound like something Scherfig is passionate about, potentially lining it up as a likely follow up to her adaptation of David Nicholls’ rom-com “One Day” which has Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess attached to star and will shoot this summer.
