Former mob killer Richard “The Ice Man” Kuklinski is one popular guy. Despite his brutal nature – or, indeed, because of it – he’s the focus of two biopics. We brought word in September that Mickey Rourke had become attached to **Ice Man about Kuklinski’s double life, and now there’s some competition in the form of Millennium Film’s The Ice Man, which has snapped up James Franco, Michael Shannon and Benicio Del Toro to star.
The three have been rumoured for a while, with Shannon now committed to playing Kuklinski, who made his name as a contract slaughterer who froze his victims to throw off forensics teams and keep the police from sniffing out his trail. But there was a flip side to his life: he was also a devoted family man whose neighbours thought he was a regular businessman, little suspecting his true, violent line of work.
This latest film will take as its source Anthony Bruno’s book The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer, and filmed interviews found in The Iceman Tapes: Conversations with a Killer, which was directed by Jim Thebaut.
Franco will play Kuklinski’s mentor, a man known as Mr Softee, while Del Toro will be mob boss Roy Demeo. Ariel Vromen will be calling the shots on a script he co-wrote with Morgan Land. “I am honoured to work with such a talented cast on such a compelling story. Since the early stages of development I had the dream of casting Michael Shannon as Kuklinski, as I believe there's no one else that can play this part better than him," says Vromen in a statement.
Despite the busy schedules of the actors, it looks like this one could make it before the cameras ahead of the Rourke film…