Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter developing A Murder in Hollywood movie about Lana Turner’s deadly mob love affair

Last Updated on October 9, 2023

According to Deadline, Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter is developing a feature-film adaptation of A Murder in Hollywood: The Untold Story of Tinseltown’s Most Shocking Crime, which deals with the “deadly love affair between screen legend Lana Turner and her gangster boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato.“

A Murder in Hollywood was written by bestselling author Casey Sherman and will be published through Sourcebooks early next year. Terence Winter will write the script for the movie and will also produce through his Cold Front Pictures production company alongside Rachel Winter through her Tangerine Pictures banner.

Lana Turner was one of the biggest actresses of the 1940s, best known for her role in The Postman Always Rings Twice. She later caught the attention of Johnny Stompanato, an enforcer for gangster Mickey Cohen and the Cohen crime family, who pursued her relentlessly. What followed was a turbulent love affair full of violent arguments and physical abuse until the fateful night when Stompanato was stabbed to death in Lana Turner’s home by her teenage daughter, Cheryl Crane. Stompanato’s family brought a wrongful death suit against Turner for $750,000.

In a joint statement, Terence Winter and Rachel Winter said, “In his stunning new book A Murder in Hollywood, Casey Sherman takes us behind the glitz and glamor of 1950s Technicolor to a front row seat at a real-life film noir, the story of Lana Turner and her terrifying love affair with gangster Johnny Stompanato. It’s a violent and harrowing tale of female empowerment, a page-turner more gripping than any film in which she ever starred.“

A Murder in Hollywood author Casey Sherman added, “A Murder in Hollywood reveals how Lana Turner took her life back from Stompanato and LA crime boss Mickey Cohen. For decades, Turner has been wrongly described as a Hollywood femme fatale, when in reality, she was a feminist icon and a true pioneer of the #metoo movement.“

There’s also a TV adaptation of A Murder in Hollywood in the works, which is set to be written by Jake Crane (Devotion).