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film by Ridley Scott

American Gangster is a American biographicalcrime film directed and produced by Ridley Scott and written by Steven Zaillian.

The film is loosely based on the criminal career of Frank Lucas, a gangster from La Grange, North Carolina who smuggled heroin into the United States on American service planes returning from the Vietnam War, before being detained by a task force led by Newark Detective Richie Roberts.

The film stars Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, with co-stars Ted Levine, John Ortiz, Josh Brolin, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ruby Dee, Lymari Nadal and Cuba Gooding Jr.

Development for the film initially began in , when Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment purchased the rights to a New York magazine story about the rise and fall of Lucas.

Two years later, screenwriter Steven Zaillian introduced a page scriptment to Scott. Original production plans were to commence in Toronto for budget purposes; however, production ev