Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Summit Entertainment has acquired screen rights to John Huddy’s non-fiction book Storming Las Vegas: How a Cuban-Born, Soviet-Trained Commando Took Down The Strip to the Tune of Five World Class Hotels, Three Armored Cars, and Millions of Dollars. Summit has attached Antoine Fuqua to direct, Lorenzo di Bonaventura to produce, and they smartly plan to title the movie, simply, Storming Las Vegas.

Published in 2008 by Random House, the book told the rags-to-riches story of a modern-day Robin Hood. Jose Vigoa was a larger-than-life Cuban-born commando veteran of the Soviet army who found his way to Vegas in the 1990s at a time when casinos were trying to embrace a squeaky clean image. Vigoa and his crew embarked on a violent 16-month crime wave that targeted some of the town’s most prominent casinos. He was pitted against a 23-year vet of the Vegas police force, who was charged with tracking down Vigoa and his cohorts without letting the story make the papers and spoil Vegas’ image. Fuqua, who last directed Brooklyn’s Finest, is also in business with Summit developing the action thriller The Tomb. CAA repped both the book and Fuqua in the deal.