Gotti-Father: Mob Scion Sells Story to Hollywood

John "Junior" Gotti says he left the life, but he's got stories

John "Junior" Gotti, son of the mob legend known as The Dapper Don, has sold the rights to his life story to a movie company.

Fiore Films, an independent production company, bought the rights to the 46-year-old mafia scion's life story, and is in talks with stars including Sylvester Stallone about roles in the production, according to The Associated Press.

Gotti, whose father John Gotti led the murderous Gambino Crime Family, was tried four times since 2005 for racketeering, with each trial ending in a hung jury. He was released from prison in December after serving nine years in a previous racketeering case. He has said he left organized crime in 1999.

Gotti now lives in a Long Island mansion with his wife and children and is working on a book and a screenplay with actor-writer Leo Rossi, according to the AP. Their project is slated to be completed by year's end, with casting and shooting scheduled to begin in early 2011.

Fiore Films CEO Marc Fiore told the AP Stallone is among the people who've expressed interest in being involved both as director and star.

"I didn't realize how many fans the Gotti family had," Fiore said. "I'm getting calls from people we probably would not be able to speak to yet because of the infancy of our company."

Gotti, in a rare interview with the AP, said he will be closely involved with the project.

"It's going to be filmed in New York, I've been working on it in New York, we can be an active player in the situation from start to finish," Gotti said. "They were willing to hear my thoughts and they assured me the script would be absolutely accurate, the script would be fair.

"The opportunity presented itself to clear up a lot of inaccuracies," Gotti said. "Now, to do it for the big screen, which I'd never imagined, automatically it's appetizing.

"This is not a mob story. That's one misconception," he continued. "This is a father-son story."

Gotti said he gets America's fascination with mobsters, past and present.

"People love it because it's so different from the average, everyday American family, yet maybe not so different," he said. "I make dinner and my family has to be there every Sunday ... I don't care what they do the rest of the week, that's what we do. We're a pretty normal family with kids running all over the place. We have opinions, we have arguments, we have joy."

TSelected Reading: The Associated Press, CNN, New York Daily News.

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