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.”