New Mob movies point to continued demand

While some question whether Mob movies have run their course, a recent slate of gangster films indicates public interest remains strong.

Mafia films such as The Alto Knights and Mob Cops already have been released this year, while others are in production.

Recently, actor Mark Wahlberg was photographed on a film set in Atlanta playing a Mob hitman in the not-yet-released drama, By Any Means. According to the New York Post, the 53-year-old actor, wearing aviator sunglasses and gold jewelry, and fitted with chin and nose prosthetics, “looked nearly unrecognizable.”

Also, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is co-writing a book with journalist Nick Bilton about an organized crime syndicate in Hawaii, planned as a movie to be directed by Martin Scorsese. Scorsese’s list of Mob films includes Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed and The Irishman.

Other Mob projects also are underway. The streaming platform Paramount+ has begun production on the third season of Tulsa King, starring Sylvester Stallone as a fictional New York Mafia capo exiled to Oklahoma. “The renewal is hardly a surprise as the show’s second season return in September was Paramount+’s most-watched global premiere in the streamer’s history,” according to The Hollywood Reporter, “and the show ranked as a Nielsen Top 10 streaming title throughout the rest of its sophomore season run.”

On the documentary side, the Fox Nation streaming service, which previously produced the Skim City docuseries about the Mob in Las Vegas, has embarked on a new true crime series under the Stories of the American Mafia banner.

Who are the next Mob movie stars?

Even with these projects in the pipeline, questions have arisen about the future of Mob movies.

After the release in March of The Alto Knights, a feature film based on a feud between gangsters Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, the New York Post asked, “Has Father Time put a hit on Mafia movies?” The film, written by Nicholas Pileggi (Goodfellas, Casino) and directed by Barry Levinson (Bugsy, Rain Man), had a less-than-hoped-for initial box office showing.

Referring to Mob movies as a “limping genre,” the Post said these productions in general had a good run in the past, including “seismic films” such as 1972’s The Godfather, but tastes change over time, as was the case with Westerns, which were “an American cinematic fixture until the 1960s and ’70s.”

The newspaper suggested that an infusion of new talent might help future Mob movies. The Post noted that some of the same veteran actors, such as Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, keep popping up in Mob movies. In The Alto Knights, De Niro plays both main characters.

The Post wondered what’s going happen when De Niro, Pacino and Pesci “are no longer with us.”

“Who is going to take these Sunday spaghetti and bullet-in-the-head roles? Timothée Chalamet?” the newspaper asked.

‘Zero awareness’

Mob movies aren’t the only films struggling to attract audiences. In a recent story about new motion pictures “fizzling at the box office,” the Wall Street Journal said attendance at cinemas is at a new low. The newspaper reported that “nearly every movie released by a major studio in the past year based on an original script or a little-known book has been a box-office disappointment.”

“Getting people into theaters more frequently is a priority for a movie industry still recovering from the pandemic,” according to the Wall Street Journal. “Box-office revenue in the first three months of this year in the U.S. and Canada was the lowest it has been, excluding the pandemic, since 1996.”

One problem is that some viewers “wait until an original motion picture is available to rent online a few weeks after its theatrical release or to stream on a service like Netflix in a few months,” the newspaper reported.

Small advertising budgets don’t help. “We’re opening films that have almost zero awareness,” Bill Barstow, president of a Nebraska-based chain, told the Wall Street Journal.

Great stories survive

George Anastasia, a journalist and co-author of The Ultimate Book of Gangster Movies, said he has often wondered if the Mob movie genre has been played out. “I think that way until another good movie comes along and people rush to see it,” he said in an email.

Anastasia said the American public has always been fascinated with outlaws—from Jesse James and Billy the Kid through Bonnie and Clyde to Al Capone and the fictional Don Corleone in The Godfather.

“So I think there will always be a market for a good Mob movie,” he said.

Glenn Kenny, a New York Times film critic and author of Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas, said in an email that there are still some organized crime topics that would appeal to audiences.

“I think a movie foregrounding the life of [New York mobster] Joey Gallo, who I know has been a side or cameo presence in prior Mob movies, might be pretty exciting,” he said. 

Anastasia, an expert on organized crime in Philadelphia, also pointed to overlooked Mob subjects that could be turned into films.

“My prejudice, but the story that has never been told and that is rich is characters, plot and pathos is the story of the Philadelphia Mob from Angelo Bruno through Joey Merlino,” he said, adding that he is “still waiting for Hollywood to figure that out.”

Anastasia is working on a nonfiction book about Bruno. The author’s previous books include Blood and Honor: Inside the Scarfo Mob, the Mafia’s Most Violent Family, which New York newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin called “the best gangster book ever written.”

Merlino, a reputed former Philadelphia Mafia boss, recently opened a restaurant in South Philadelphia, Skinny Joey’s Cheesesteaks, whose celebrity patrons have included retired NFL Pro Bowler Jason Kelce, a longtime center for the Philadelphia Eagles.

Screenwriter and director Nicholas Celozzi (The Class) said audiences will go see movies of any genre—horror films, romantic comedies and Mob movies—if they are good.

Celozzi’s newest production, November 1963, about the killing of President John F. Kennedy, begins filming in Winnipeg in June, he said. After that, Celozzi will turn his attention to an earlier movie project, The Legitimate Wiseguy, based on his relationship years ago with Tony Spilotro, who, for a period beginning in the early 1970s, was the Chicago Outfit’s overseer in Las Vegas. Celozzi comes from a family with a Mob backstory. His grandmother’s brother, Sam Giancana, was a Chicago Outfit boss.

Celozzi said in a telephone interview that audiences will pay to see movies that have “heart” and are character-driven.

“Great stories will always survive,” he said.

Larry Henry is a veteran print and broadcast journalist. He served as press secretary for Nevada Governor Bob Miller and was political editor at the Las Vegas Sun and managing editor at KFSM-TV, the CBS affiliate in Northwest Arkansas. Today, he is a senior reporter for Gambling.com.