Another Las Vegas-based TV pilot is in the works. Loosely based on the Las Vegas law firm Cristalli & Saggese, the series plans to feature Jim Belushi cast as a character based on Michael V. Cristalli and Jerry O’Connell as one based on Marc A. Saggese. Both are on board, Cristalli said. The characters’ names will not be the same as the lawyers.’
It’s the culmination of a four-year project that began with a relationship between Cristalli and Saggese and brothers Joe and Harry Gantz, the producers and developers of the HBO documentary series “Taxicab Confessions.”
“We shot a docu-drama several years ago about the law office” says Cristalli, and it was sold to CBS as a drama.
The TV pilot’s director, Davis Guggenheim, directed Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and the writing team of Niels Mueller and Kevin Kennedy collaborated on “The Assassination of Richard Nixon,” which starred Sean Penn.
Cristalli and Saggese represented Sandy Murphy in her October 2004 retrial in the Ted Binion murder case that ended in an acquittal of murder, but she was convicted of lesser charges of burglary and grand larceny.
Vegas Backstage Access (VBA) 