The trailer for Gotti features John Travolta, nice suits, and…E from Entourage directing?
Aux News Coming DistractionsA project that’s been kicking around since 2011 is at last seeing the light of day: Namely, John Travolta doing his best Goodfellas impression.
Actually, it’s the biopic Gotti, based on the life of the infamous (and attention-loving) New York mob boss John Gotti. The above trailer makes it look like it’s going to be a fairly extensive swath of the man’s life story—over the course of three decades—but focused largely on the years following his ascent to power, thanks to a clever little bit of diplomacy known as “killing the top guy and then assuming his place.” Travolta’s real-life wife Kelly Preston costars as Gotti’s loyal wife, and the mobster’s son John Gotti, Jr. (Spencer Lofranco) also plays a large role, as Gotti brings his child into that world against the wishes of his spouse.
But even in a movie where Travolta is playing a larger-than-life mob boss with an outsized attitude and reputation to match (Gotti’s nickname was “The Teflon Don”), the most unusual thing isn’t the casting. It’s the director: The film is shot by Kevin Connolly, a.k.a. “E” from Entourage. The actor has shot a couple of smaller indie films, as well as two episodes of Entourage and—weirdly—a few installments of his early show, Unhappily Ever After, which you may remember for featuring a talking rabbit named Mr. Floppy, voiced by Bobcat Goldthwait. We’ll know whether he can successfully capture the New York criminal underworld when Gotti opens December 15.