Kudos to Phil Carlo, who fought Hollywood and got what he wanted. The author, who penned “The Ice Man: Confessions Of A Mafia Contract Killer,” has long been trying to get the material adapted into film form. “The Ice Man” tells the story of husky Mafia hitman Richard Kuklinski, who had a forty year career as mob enforcer, taking out (by his claim) 200 victims, despite his wife and children being unaware of his true profession.
We reported on this a while ago, with Carlo feuding with producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura over the intended casting of Channing Tatum in the role. Di Bonaventura appears to have moved on, and new producer Matty Beckerman and Natural Selection have acquiesced to Carlo’s requests, with Mickey Rourke onboard as the enigmatic Kuklinski. David McKenna (“American History X”) will be scripting the film, which will be fully financed and produced by Natural Selection.
While the original Kuklinski was a burly, bearded Paul Bartel-type, the chance to see Rourke in a lead role as a hitman sounds pretty cool, particularly if Natural Selection, an indie company partially bankrolled by the son of Muammar Quadafi, keeps with their company standard of budgets $15 million or lower. We’re seeing shades of “St. Vincent,” a hitman drama Rourke was attached to for a while that Walter Hill is now making with Pierce Brosnan.