John Gotti biopic that always seemed three seconds from falling apart is probably falling apart

By Sean O'Neal | October 7, 2011 | 9:49pm

Aux Features Film

After all the months spent publicly courting John Travolta to play Mafia don John Gotti, searching everywhere for the perfect actress to play Victoria Gotti and then just settling on Kelly Preston, hiring then firing then rehiring then firing then fi-hiring then hi-firing Lindsay Lohan, calling up TMZ hourly with other out-there casting rumors like Kim Kardashian to rack up even more press hits for the film’s classy website, losing director Nick Cassavetes then replacing him with Barry Levinson, bringing in mob movie ringers like Levinson’s Bugsy collaborator James Toback, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, and even enduring a lawsuit in which Joe Pesci claims he was stiffed out of a major role and forced to get fat for nothing—after all this, it appears that Gotti: In The Shadow Of My Father might end up being something of a shaky, shady production.

Showbiz411’s Roger Friedman reports that all work on the film has officially stopped—or what little work has been done beyond making grandiose statements to the press, which is to say “not much”—with producer Marc Fiore failing to deliver on his promises of getting the money he swore was coming “from overseas,” and the week in which most of the film’s principals (including Travolta, Levinson, and Pacino) were due to get paid coming and going without so much as a written IOU. And so it seems likely that another Hollywood dream will die for one more eager, fresh-off-the-bus former manager of a mob-connected brokerage firm who spent four years in federal prison for scamming investors out of millions of dollars. Man, sometimes this town just chews you up and spits you out.