News

Warner Bros. Acquires Rights to Gangster Squad

Warner Brothers has acquired the film rights to Tales From the Gangster Squad, a seven-part series of articles written by Paul Lieberman of the L.A. Times. Dan Lin will produce the feature. The articles detailed the Gangster Squad, a team assembled by the LAPD in 1946 to combat East Coast mobsters and gangsters who were controlling the mean streets of L.A. via drive-by shootings and shootouts in public places. The squad lasted through the 1950s and adopted an "anything goes" mentality to keep the mobsters from overtaking the city.

The author began working on the series in 1992 and interviewed over 100 sources who were involved with the Squad. The series focused on two cops in the Squad who were obsessed with taking down mobster Mickey Cohen. The studio and Lin have sent the spec to screenwriters to adapt.

—The ARTISTdirect Staff
12.01.08