Credit: Alamy
Sat 28 February 2026 1:30, UK
Some legal shenanigans prevented Joe Pesci from being in one of the worst films ever made.
There are few recent films that have become as notoriously disastrous as Gotti, the crime thriller based on the life of the notorious gangster John Gotti, and while the finished film ended up being universally panned and turned into a joke, it started with potential had its producers not managed to feud with its could-be stars, including Pesci.
Given his legendary performances in Goodfellas, Casino, and My Cousin Vinny, it only made sense to cast him as a ruthless gangster, and since he only rarely played lead roles, Gotti offered him the opportunity to be a key supporting actor with the part of Angelo Ruggiero, a mobster who served as the head of the Gambino crime family.
At one point in early development, Al Pacino had been cast as Gotti, meaning that he and Pesci would get to be co-stars, and while they are both mutual friends of co-star Robert De Niro, the two didn’t appear in a movie together until 2019’s The Irishman.
An issue of financing and script development became prominent early on in the production of Gotti, as directors like Nick Cassavetes, Joe Johnston, and Barry Levinson were all attached at various points, with Pesci under the impression that his deal to play Ruggiero was finalised, based on a press conference given by the production company Fiore Films at the Cannes Film Festival. However, it was afterwards that Pesci found that both his role and salary had been significantly cut.
Despite Fiore’s claim that they had never officially made an offer, the actor had already gained 30 pounds to play the character, and passed on the opportunity to play the less prominent Anthony Casso for only $1million, with his response being to sue Fiore for $3m, claiming that he had been duped and lied to.
Pesci’s anger is understandable, given that it was obvious that Fiore was attempting to get him involved in the film in order to utilise his fame, even if there was no intention of paying him his full salary. Similar incidents with other prospective cast members, such as Ben Foster and Lindsay Lohan, are what stalled Gotti in development hell until 2015, when Kevin Connolly signed on to direct with Lionsgate handling the domestic distribution.
Gotti eventually cast John Travolta in the titular role, which was certainly a downgrade from the other potential actors in contention; while Travolta had once been one of the most famous stars in the world, his career had been in a downward spiral ever since the disappointment of Battlefield Earth in 2000, and he has spent most of the last two decades making direct-to-video genre thrillers. While the talented actor Pruitt Taylor Vince was cast in the role of Ruggiero, it didn’t prevent the film from being eviscerated by critics when it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018.
What became even more unusual was that the film’s marketing campaign began an aggressive approach in which official social media accounts targeted film critics who had given negative reviews and accused them of being biased. Thankfully, Pesci managed to sit out the entire controversy and made his return to acting alongside Pacino and De Niro in The Irishman, a much better mob film that earned him an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Supporting Actor’.