As Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt reunite onscreen for The Smashing Machine, the pair is already looking forward to their next project together.
During Monday’s premiere of the Benny Safdie-helmed A24 biopic about UFC legend Mark Kerr, which debuts Friday in theaters, Blunt teased Deadline about her upcoming movie with Johnson, which has been described as a Hawaiian-set Goodfellas from Martin Scorsese himself.
“We’re developing it right now. It’s a really astonishing story,” said Blunt on the red carpet at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. “It’s the last great American mob story, and I can’t believe it hasn’t been told yet. It’s a terribly exciting role for [Johnson] to kind of dig into. So, it’s being written, we’re working on it. And that’s the wonderful part, is building it.”
Likening the role to Robert De Niro’s Goodfellas character, Scorsese’s pitch follows “a ruthless Hawaiian crime boss, also based on a real figure, who battled encroaching rivals for control of organized crime on the islands.”
Written by Nick Bilton, the pitch focuses on a turbulent time on the island paradise when the aspiring mob boss battled elements like triads and U.S. military to wrest control. It was a bloody battle. The character is based on Wilford ‘Nappy’ Pulawa, who led the largest organized crime syndicate on the Hawaiian Islands, The Company, in the 1970s. He ruled through a reputation for brutality and murder.
The Company’s rackets included gambling, human trafficking, marijuana trafficking and labor corruption. Eventually charged with two murders, Pulawa got 15 years for tax evasion in 1973, and he was released in 1984. In 1975, Nevada barred him for life from entering the state’s casinos.
Producers include Scorsese, Johnson, Blunt, DiCaprio, Bilton, Dany Garcia, Lisa Frechette and LBI Entertainment’s Rick Yorn and Chris Donnelly.