A new movie is set to crack open the long, painful and almost obsessive backstory behind one of cinema’s most fought-over masterpieces. Italy’s Leone Film Group is developing an origins picture about Sergio Leone’s 15-year quest to bring “Once Upon a Time in America” to the screen, and the man’s own daughter is steering the ship. The project lands as the same company rides huge buzz at Cannes with James Gray’s “Paper Tiger.”

A Dream Project 42 Years in the Making

Italy’s Leone Film Group, which is in Cannes as a producer of James Gray’s competition entry “Paper Tiger,” is set to make an ambitious origins movie about Sergio Leone’s quest to shoot “Once Upon a Time in America,” the gangster epic that premiered at Cannes in 1984 and is now considered a masterpiece.

The movie does not yet have a title. But the pitch already sounds like Leone himself wrote it. “It’s basically the story of a man who chases a dream for his entire life,” Raffaella Leone, who is Sergio Leone’s daughter, told Variety. “Or, at least, who took 15 years to make a movie and didn’t do anything else until he managed to make it. And it’s told with my father’s irony.”

That single line carries the weight of decades. Leone walked away from huge offers to stay loyal to this one story. After the international success of his “Man with No Name” Western trilogy starring Clint Eastwood, which included the films A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), director Sergio Leone was already hard at work planning an ambitious passion project, one that he believed in so strongly that he turned down several offers, including the chance to direct an adaptation of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather in 1972 (which was then given to director Francis Ford Coppola).

Sergio Leone Once Upon a Time in America origins movie

The Directors and Writers Behind the New Film

Leone Film Group is handing the keys to a team that knows crime, comedy and chaos. Italian directorial duo Giuseppe Stasi and Giancarlo Fontana, who broke out Prime Video’s dark and comic crime series “The Bad Guy,” are set to helm the yet-to-be-titled “Once Upon a Time in America” origins picture that they are writing with “The Bad Guy” co-creators Ludovica Rampoldi and Davide Serino.

The film will be a time-jumping mosaic, not a straight biopic. The film will criss-cross through different time periods, including flashbacks to Sergio Leone’s childhood. It will be set in Rome, New York, Los Angeles, Paris and Cannes, which is where Leone first met Arnon Milchan, who produced “Once Upon a Time in America” and where the epic subsequently premiered to mixed reviews.

“It’s basically the story of a man who chases a dream for his entire life.”
Raffaella Leone, co-CEO, Leone Film Group

Family at the Helm of a Personal Story

This is not just a studio project. It is a daughter telling her father’s story. Raffaella Leone, who is Leone Film Group’s co-CEO, is producing the “Time in America” origins film in tandem with Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio, chief strategy officer of Italy’s EssilorLuxottica and president of Ray-Ban.

Del Vecchio, who holds a 19% stake in Leone group, will also be in Cannes as part of the “Paper Tiger” delegation. That overlap matters. The same producing muscle behind one of this year’s most talked-about Cannes titles is now bankrolling a film about the trauma and triumph of getting a passion project made.

Raffaella has lived with this story her whole life. She has previously made clear that her father refused to acknowledge the chopped-up American cut, and she has spent years protecting his original vision.

Why “Once Upon a Time in America” Still Hurts and Heals

The original film’s road to release was brutal. The film gained a mediocre reception at several sneak premieres in North America. Because of this early audience reaction, the fear of its length, its graphic violence, and the inability of theaters to have multiple showings in one day, The Ladd Company cut entire scenes and removed approximately 90 minutes of the film without the supervision of Sergio Leone.

The pain of that hack job sits at the emotional center of the new project. The film only grossed $5.5 million domestically and received mixed reviews. Time, of course, has flipped the verdict.

Here is how the legacy looks today:

• Cannes 1984 premiere: The film received glowing reviews from critics and was well-received by audiences at the festival, who gave the film an enthusiastic 15-minute standing ovation.
• Rotten Tomatoes score: 86% based on 56 reviews.
• Metacritic average: 75 out of 100 based on reviews from 20 critics, indicating “generally favorable” reviews.
• Cast led by: Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, Joe Pesci, Burt Young, Tuesday Weld and Treat Williams.

Leone died in 1989, but several years later, his kids took it upon themselves to oversee the restoration process so that moviegoers could see the film in its original state, as their father intended. Over time, the frosty reception to the movie thawed. With a Certified Fresh score of 86% on Rotten Tomatoes (and an audience score of 93%), Once Upon a Time in America is now considered one of the greatest gangster movies of all time.

The Cannes Connection and What Comes Next

The timing is no accident. Leone Film Group is on the Croisette this week with serious heat. The gritty crime thriller, starring Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller, will world premiere in competition, while Neon has secured North American rights. The “Paper Tiger” deal cements Neon’s huge presence on the Croisette this year.

The film is set to premiere in the main competition of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival on May 16, where it is nominated for the Palme d’Or. Two brothers pursue the American Dream but get entangled in a dangerous Russian mafia scheme that terrorizes their family, testing their bond as betrayal becomes possible.

The Leone biopic is not the company’s only big bet. Another film starring Penélope Cruz, Days of Abandonment, is also moving forward with plans to start shooting in early 2027. Additionally, an English-language remake of Paolo Genovese’s Italian comedy Madly is in the early stages of development as well.

The trend is also bigger than one company. The behind-the-scenes stories of famous movies are more or less a trend in the past few years. Paramount+ explored how The Godfather was put together with the limited series The Offer. An upcoming film will explore Sylvester Stallone’s journey in making Rocky for the film I Play Rocky. Leone’s story may be the most cinematic of them all.

For decades, “Once Upon a Time in America” has felt like a love letter that almost did not make it to the mailbox. Now, with Sergio’s daughter producing, two daring Italian filmmakers writing, and the world finally treating the original as the masterpiece it is, the man who refused to give up on his dream is about to get a love letter of his own. What do you think about Hollywood revisiting the messy, beautiful birth of “Once Upon a Time in America”? Drop your thoughts in the comments and share this story with the cinephile in your life.