Leone Film Group Is Making a 15-Year Obsession Into a Movie
TL;DR: Italy's Leone Film Group is developing an origins story about director Sergio Leone's decade-and-a-half fight to make Once Upon a Time in America (1984). Directors Giuseppe Stasi and Giancarlo Fontana are attached; filming locations span Rome, New York, LA, Paris, and Cannes. No cast, budget, or release date yet — but this is the first major project greenlit since James Grey's Paper Tiger premiered at Cannes 2026.
The Story Behind the Story: Why This Matters Now
Here's the thing nobody mentions often enough: Once Upon a Time in America wasn't just a passion project that succeeded. It was sabotaged.
When the film premiered at Cannes in 1984 at its full 229-minute length, critics divided sharply. Then the American distributor, The Ladd Company, slashed it down to 139 minutes and rearranged the entire timeline into chronological order — gutting Leone's nonlinear structure completely. That butchered version tanked commercially. The full cut took years to be properly restored and re-evaluated. Only then did people realize what they were looking at: a masterpiece.
But getting there — to that 1984 premiere — took Sergio Leone fifteen years. Not fifteen months. Fifteen years of fighting studios, chasing financing, rewriting scripts, cycling through cast members, juggling legal tangles. According to production histories, Leone had been trying to adapt Harry Grey's 1952 novel The Hoods since the late 1960s. He did essentially nothing else during that stretch. One film. One vision. Waiting.
That's the story Leone Film Group — run by Leone's daughter Raffaella — is turning into a movie.
What strikes me is the timing. In 2026, when franchise logic dominates and the idea of a filmmaker spending a decade and a half on a single non-IP project feels almost alien, this couldn't be more countercultural. It's a story about obsession, about saying no to everything else, about believing in something so badly you're willing to sacrifice years chasing it. That's not a story Hollywood tells about itself very often anymore.
Who's Making It (and What That Tells You About the Tone)
Directors: Giuseppe Stasi and Giancarlo Fontana
Co-writer: Ludovica Rampoldi
Producer: Raffaella Leone (Sergio Leone's daughter, Leone Film Group co-CEO)
Co-producer: Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio (EssilorLuxottica strategy officer, 19% stake in Leone Film Group)
Stasi and Fontana are an interesting choice. They're not prestige-drama guys. They made The Bad Guy, a two-season Prime Video crime series that's irreverent, genre-savvy, and funny — darkly funny — about the mafia underworld. Rampoldi co-wrote that show with them.
If you've seen The Bad Guy, you know their instincts: menace mixed with absurdist comedy. Capable of genuine brutality, but never reverent about it. That matters because Raffaella Leone has already signaled what she wants this film to be.
"It's basically the story of a man who chases a dream for his entire life," she told Variety at Cannes. "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 last phrase — with my father's irony — is doing a lot of work. Sergio Leone was famously self-deprecating and mordant in interviews, even during the worst production bottlenecks. He had a dark sense of humor about his own obsession. A straightforward hero's-journey biopic would betray the man they're trying to portray. The Stasi/Fontana choice signals they understand that distinction. Hard to say if they can actually pull it off — but at least they're not aiming for hagiography.
What's Confirmed, What's Still Up in the Air
Variety broke the exclusive from Cannes on May 12, 2026. Leone Film Group was already there as a producer on James Grey's competition entry Paper Tiger — which suggests they're actively shopping multiple projects right now.
Here's what's locked in:
- Non-linear structure with flashbacks to Leone's childhood
- Five filming locations: Rome, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, and Cannes
- Raffaella Leone overseeing the project as producer
- Stasi, Fontana, and Rampoldi writing and directing
What's not confirmed: casting (and whoever plays Sergio Leone will define the entire film), budget, production timeline, or which distributor picks it up internationally. Leone Film Group is juggling multiple projects at once — Bad Boy's Girl is in post-production, Days of Abandonment (an Elena Ferrante adaptation with Penélope Cruz) is between directors after Isabel Coixet departed. That suggests the origins film won't shoot until 2027 at the earliest.
Where to Watch the Original (and Why You Should Care)
If you want to prepare for this film — or just finally watch what all the fuss is about — here's the practical question: where can you actually stream Once Upon a Time in America in India right now?
Current availability:
- Amazon Prime Video India — available for streaming (check current status; availability shifts)
- Not on Netflix India, Disney+ Hotstar, JioCinema, SonyLIV, or Zee5 as of this writing
The original is in English with no widely distributed Hindi or regional-language dub. That limits its reach beyond English-fluent metro audiences in tier-1 cities. For ongoing availability updates across India and other territories, Movie OTT's where-to-watch tracker keeps the current picture up to date.
Here's what's weird about Leone's footprint in India: his Westerns have small but intensely loyal cult followings. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West show up regularly in Indian cinephile forums and YouTube channels. The 1984 film — darker, more urban, less obviously "Western" — has a smaller fanbase but one that's genuinely devoted. An origins picture could reintroduce the whole Leone catalog to a new generation of streamers who've never even heard of him.
The film itself runs 229 minutes (that's the full Cannes cut). It's not family-friendly — it's violent, morally gray, built for adult viewers who can sit with ambiguity. If you've never watched a Sergio Leone film before, you should know: he makes movies that move slowly, that trust you to understand mood and subtext without explanation, where long silences matter more than dialogue. They're not for everyone. But if they work for you, they work.
The Production History: Why Fifteen Years Mattered
Sergio Leone (1929–1989) directed only seven feature films in his lifetime — a remarkably small filmography for someone whose influence on cinema is almost incalculable. He invented the Spaghetti Western with the Dollars Trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), then evolved into something more operatic and melancholy with Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) and Duck, You Sucker (1971).
Once Upon a Time in America was his last film. He died in 1989 — five years after it premiered — reportedly while developing a World War II epic about the Siege of Leningrad. You can find the full production documentation at the AFI Catalog entry, which lays out the scope in detail.
What the origins film will need to capture is the sheer grinding quality of those fifteen years. This wasn't creative block. This was a director saying no to every other project, every paycheck, every opportunity that might've distracted him. It was financing falling through. Lawsuits. Scripts being rewritten. Robert De Niro and James Woods finally being locked in after years of casting limbo. The weight of all that — the cost of single-minded obsession — that's what makes the story worth telling.
Why Leone Film Group Is the Right Home for This Story
Leone Film Group has operated from Rome as a significant European production entity under Raffaella Leone's leadership. Recent credits include Paper Tiger (James Grey, 2026 Cannes competition) and the Penélope Cruz–led Ferrante adaptation. That's not a production company resting on its founder's legacy — that's an active, working studio shipping contemporary work while stewarding the Leone archive.
The fact that Raffaella is directly producing this origins film matters. She lived through her father's obsession. She knows the household cost of fifteen years spent on one project. She's not outsourcing this to some director who'll sentimentalize the story. She's handing it to filmmakers whose sensibility — irreverent, dark-comic, crime-adjacent — matches her father's actual personality.
Movie OTT's director and producer profiles have background on Stasi and Fontana's previous work if you want to get a sense of their tone before this film arrives. Their Prime Video series shows they can handle complex ensemble casts, moral ambiguity, and violence without winking at the camera.
What to Watch For (and When This Might Actually Arrive)
The origins film is currently in development. No production start date. No cast. No distributor. Leone Film Group is actively shopping projects at Cannes 2026, which suggests they're building financing pieces and distribution partnerships right now — but that doesn't mean cameras will roll tomorrow.
Watch for casting announcements first. Whoever plays Sergio Leone will be the defining creative choice of the entire film. Watch also for which platform acquires international rights — Netflix, Prime Video, or a traditional theatrical distributor will each point toward a different intended audience and tone.
For real-time updates on where Once Upon a Time in America is currently streaming in your region, where the new origins film lands when it's ready, and production news as it breaks, Movie OTT's streaming tracker maintains current information across India, the US, the UK, and beyond. Bookmark it — you'll want to check back regularly as this project moves forward.
