Summit Entertainment has acquired the rights to John Huddy’s too crazy to be fiction true crime tome Storming Las Vegas, and Deadline reports that the studio has attached Antoine Fuqua (Brooklyn’s Finest) to direct. The book tells the story of Jose Vigoa, a Cuban-born commando veteran of the Soviet Army who went on a violent 16-month crimes spree in Las Vegas targeting some of the Strip’s most famous institutions.Vigoa’s stint occurred in the late 1990s, at a time when the city was attempting to re-brand itself as a family-friendly vacation destination. A 23-year veteran of the police force was charged with finding and capturing the men responsible for the spree, without letting news of the robberies affect the city’s image. Fuqua is currently also (kind of) attached to the Tupac biopic, though that production’s gone through a number of starts and stops. No word on who’s scripting Storming Las Vegas or how soon the film might go into production. Hit the jump for a synopsis of the novel.
Here’s the synopsis for Storming Las Vegas: How a Cuban-Born, Soviet-Trained Commando Took Down The Strip to the Tune of Five World Class Hotels, Three Armored Cars, and Millions of Dollars:
Network producer and onetime Miami Herald columnist Huddy tells a gripping story of greed, violence, theft and public relations. Las Vegas had just launched its new blitz of advertising—advancing itself not as Sin City but as a family-friendly vacation destination—when Jose Vigoa (a Cuban-born commando veteran of the Soviet Army) hit town in the late 1990s. Vigoa and a small crew embarked on a violent 16-month crime wave, targeting some of the Strip's most prominent (and, as Vigoa showed, vulnerable) institutions. A 23-year veteran of the Las Vegas Police Force, Lt. John Alamshaw was charged with finding and capturing the men behind the crime spree—without allowing the robberies to become national news and spoil Vegas's new image. Huddy traces Vigoa's personal history from his childhood in Castro's Cuba to fighting for the Red Army in Afghanistan, his return to Cuba and eventual resettlement in the United States. Then he chronicles the Cuban's increasingly audacious grabs for Vegas riches and his ultimate sentencing to more than 500 years in prison with no possibility of parole. This debut is a must for true-crime enthusiasts. [Amazon]