Arthaus Pictures Acquires Rights to Mafia-FBI Saga "Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the FBI, and a Devil's Deal;" Script Due in Mid April

A group headed by Arthaus Pictures has acquired the motion picture rights to the best-selling book "Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the FBI, and a Devil's Deal," and has begun development of a film on about its main character, fugitive underworld figure Whitey Bulger.

Written by prize-winning Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill "Black Mass" is a true-crime saga about FBI corruption and the uniquely savage New England mob scene. After stints in Alcatraz and Leavenworth, James "Whitey" Bulger returned to Boston and scorched a trail of murder to the top of the Irish mob. His younger brother, Billy Bulger, is the iron-fisted president of the Massachusetts State Senate and later president of the University of Massachusetts. John Connolly is an ambitious FBI agent and fellow "Southie," a pal of the Bulgers since boyhood.

Brian Oliver ("Auto Focus") will produce the film for Arthaus Pictures and will begin talking with studios next week. "Black Mass" screenwriter Mark Mallouk is also the screenwriter of "The Wheat Field." The script for "Black Mass" is expected to be finished in mid-April.

Recent projects by Oliver and Nittolo include "Legion," a psychological thriller set on the Mexican border, and "The Wheat Field," a gripping story of sex, politics and betrayal, both of which are in development.

"'Black Mass' goes to the core of the war between the government and the mob," says Oliver. "It shows us how easy the good guys can begin the descent into lying, breaking the rules and ignoring the law."

Whitey Bulger is now near the top of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List just below Osama bin Laden, and there is a $1 million reward for his capture. He is a figure of unending fascination, featured 12 times on "America's Most Wanted" and most recently was the subject of a CBS "60 Minutes" investigation.

In a review for The New York Times attorney-author Alan Dershowitz said: "['Black Mass'] is at once a uniquely Boston tale about Italian-Irish rivalries in organized crime, law enforcement and politics, and a parable of what happens when law enforcement officers get too close to their informers." Amazon.com said it "paints a vivid portrait of Boston's underbelly and its inclusive political machine, as well as exposing one of the worst scandals in FBI history."

"Black Mass" won the MWA's 2001 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime. Co-author Gerard O'Neill has won the Pulitzer Prize and the Sigma Delta Chi Awards. Dick Lehr has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist and won the Hancock and Loeb awards. Together they wrote the highly praised "The Rise and Fall of a Mafia Family."

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