Jennifer Lawrence to Star as a Mob Girl

Jennifer Lawence Hollywood hiatus is definitely over. She’s set to both star in and produce an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning true crime book Mob Girl: A Woman’s Life in the Underworld, according to Variety. Lawrence’s Mob Girl is set to be directed by renowned Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino. Sorrentino also created The Young Pope, the wonderfully campy HBO series that displayed Jude Law’s naked butt to the world within the first two minutes of its pilot. This should be good.

Mob Girl tells the story of Arlyne Brickman, a mob wife turned police informant. Brickman was born in 1933, and grew up surrounded by crime in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Her father was a Jewish mobster, and she grew up admiring those in the criminal underworld; her childhood hero was Virginia Hill, girlfriend of famed gangster Bugsy Siegel. At fourteen she started dating mobsters, preferring to spend time with Italian wiseguys.

Brickman dated several gangsters (and briefly married a small-time one), and she was abused by several. But she wasn’t just a girlfriend: Brickman helped loan sharks, cooked books, and sold drugs (her daughter, an addict, died of AIDS in 1989). But after 25 years spent with gangsters, Brickman became a police informant, at first supplying the police with information occasionally and eventually escalating to a full-time informant. She served as an informant and witness in the government’s case against the Colombo crime family, which was ultimately successful. She refused to join the Witness Protection Program.

Brad Weston, founder and CEO of Makeready, the production company behind Mob Girl, sees the film as a unique take on a gangster flick. “Seeing this story from a woman’s point of view is a fresh and exciting approach to telling a classic mob story,” he told Variety. “We could not imagine a more perfect team of stellar filmmakers, with Jennifer starring in a tour de force role and Paolo at the helm, to bring Arlyne’s strength and unique perspective to life on screen.”