Mobsters Unite: De Niro and Scorsese Look to add Pacino and Pesci to Next Project

Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro have been working on adapting the mobster biography I Heard You Paint Houses for some time now. The project is through Paramount Pictures and Tribeca Productions with a screenplay from Steve Zaillian (American Gangster). Zaillian also adapted The Girl With The Dragon Tatto, currently in production.

Deadline is reporting that the two are looking to add All Pacino and Joe Pesci to the movie which has a working title of The Irishman. Robert De Niro is signed on to play Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, a mob assassin who is believed to have carried out more than 25 mob murders, and claimed to have killed Jimmy Hoffa. Scorsese will obviously be directing and no word on what roles Pacino or Pesci might play at this point.

Here is the book synopsis from Random House:

"I heard you paint houses" are the first words Jimmy Hoffa ever spoke to Frank "the Irishman" Sheeran. To paint a house is to kill a man. The paint is the blood that splatters on the walls and floors. In the course of nearly five years of recorded interviews Frank Sheeran confessed to Charles Brandt that he handled more than twenty-five hits for the mob, and for his friend Hoffa. Sheeran learned to kill in the U.S. Army, where he saw an astonishing 411 days of active combat duty in Italy during World War II. After returning home he became a hustler and hit man, working for legendary crime boss Russell Bufalino. Eventually he would rise to a position of such prominence that in a RICO suit then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani would name him as one of only two non-Italians on a list of 26 top mob figures. When Bufalino ordered Sheeran to kill Hoffa, he did the deed, knowing that if he had refused he would have been killed himself. Sheeran's important and fascinating story includes new information on other famous murders, and provides rare insight to a chapter in American history. Charles Brandt has written a page-turner that is destined to become a true crime classic.