Sean Penn and Ryan Gosling Offered Roles in GANGSTER SQUAD; David Yates May Direct Capone Biopic CICERO

While major studios are gobbling up scripts centered on supernatural creatures, Warner Bros. is still finding time to make movies about good, old-fashioned human monsters.  According to Deadline, the studio is offering Sean Penn the role of vicious mobster Mickey Cohen in Ruben Fleischer’s Gangster Squad.  The studio is also offering Ryan Gosling the role of one of the two cops who were tasked with taking Cohen down.  Gangster Squad is based on a series of articles by Paul Lieberman that chronicled an elite squad of Los Angeles police officers in the 1940s and the screenplay is by former LA cop Will Beall.  The crime drama is one of the higher-profile pics currently set up at Warner Bros. and Deadline says the role of the charismatic Cohen, a former boxer who became an associate of legendary gangsters Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel, could be as memorable as Robert De Niro’s turn as Al Capone in The Untouchables.

And Capone may also be getting his own film at Warner Bros.  Hit the jump for details on the Capone biopic, Cicero.

Deadline reports that Walon Green’s script Cicero, which traces the formative years of Al Capone’s life, is gaining traction and the studio and that Harry Potter director David Yates may be interested in making the project his follow-up to the upcoming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2.

While a “Capone Begins” type of project doesn’t sound like a terrible idea, HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and actor Stephen Graham are already doing a solid job of showing Capone in his earlier, but-still-sociopathic days.  I’d be curious to know what Cicero brings to the table in terms of fleshing out the famous mobster’s story and character.