Warner Bros. is hoping that crime does pay, and it's looking at a trio of Hollywood heavy hitters to help pull it off.
WB has been having meetings in back rooms with the likes of Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling and Josh Brolin to headline the cast of "Gangster Squad," a 1940s crime drama to be directed by the goodfella who brought us "Zombieland," Ruben Fleischer, according to Deadline.
Penn is in talks to play Mickey Cohen, the charismatic and completely sociopathic former boxer who became an associate of such notorious underworld figures as Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel.
Cohen was a charmer, usually seen with a beautiful woman on his arm, but his mood could darken on a dime -- and sometimes, well, people got hurt, ya see?
Gosling and Brolin would be playing the detectives assigned to stop Cohen's reign of violence, part of a real-life elite team of L.A. cops charged with bringing down Cohen and other mobsters.
"Gangster Squad" sounds like it could be the movie that Michael Mann's "Public Enemies" unfortunately wasn't -- let's hope this cast comes together to help make it so.