‘Mafia Spies’ Doc Series Ordered At Paramount+ From CreativeChaos, Danny Strong & Matt Jackson

Peter White
·2 min read
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EXCLUSIVE: Paramount+ International is investigating Mafia Spies.

The streamer has ordered a six-part premium doc series, based on Mafia Spies: The Inside Story of the CIA, Gangsters, JFK, and Castro by Thomas Maier, who wrote the book that Showtime’s Masters of Sex was based on.

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The series comes from CreativeChaos, Danny Strong Productions and Jackson Pictures.

Based on never-before-released JFK files, the series tells the shocking connections between the CIA, the mob, and Sinatra’s Rat Pack from Vegas to Miami to Havana. It explores America’s most remarkable espionage plots ever—with CIA agents, mob hitmen, “kompromat” sex, presidential indiscretion, and James Bond-like killing devices together in a top-secret mystery full of surprise twists and deadly intrigue.

In the early 1960s, two top gangsters, Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana, were hired by the CIA to kill Cuba’s Communist leader, Fidel Castro, only to wind up murdered themselves amidst Congressional hearings and a national debate about the JFK assassination.

Mafia Spies revolves around the outlaw friendship of these two mob buddies and their world of CIA spies, fellow Mafioso in Chicago, Cuban exile commandos in Miami, beautiful Hollywood women, famous entertainers like Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack in Las Vegas, Castro’s own spies in Havana and his double agents hidden in Florida, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI snooping, and the Kennedy administration’s “Get Castro” obsession in Washington.

Maier took advantage of the National Archives’ 2017–18 release of the long-suppressed JFK files, many of which deal with the CIA’s top secret anti-Castro operation in Florida and Cuba. It will ask who killed Johnny and Sam—and why wasn’t Castro assassinated despite the CIA’s many clandestine efforts?

Tom Donahue and Ilan Arboleda serve as showrunners with Donahue also directing. They will exec produce alongside Dopesick’s Danny Strong and his production partner Mandy Safavi as well as Matt Jackson, Allan Loeb, and Jordan Bogdonavage. Joanne Lee is a co-executive producer.

It is the latest doc series for CreativeChaos, which was also behind Paramount+’s four-part docuseries The Murder of God’s Banker, about the mysterious death of Milanese banker Roberto Calvi. It also produced TCM’s Dean Martin biography King of Cool with Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way and Danny Strong, HBO Max’s Bleed Out and Netflix music documentary Los Tigre del Norte at Folsom Prison.  

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