There are actually a couple of Vegas movies in the works right now. Back in late April, stars including Bruce Willis, Justin Timberlake, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Vince Vaughn, and Rebecca Hall were in town for five days of location filming for Lay the Favorite, a movie based on the memoir of the same name by Beth Raymer, a former stripper, boxer, and waitress (at the excellent Komol Thai restaurant), who fell into the world of professional sports betting in Las Vegas in 2001 and made a career of it for awhile.
When, after four years in the game, a client stiffed her for $25,000, she got out of pro gambling and got accepted to Columbia; it was while she was in graduate school that her book was picked up by Random House. The movie rights were picked up not long after the book came out, and the Stephen Frears-directed film is due to be released in 2012. It's described as a drama-comedy. Hall plays Raymer, Willis plays her gambling mentor, and Zeta-Jones plays his ex-showgirl wife.
However, the movie we think you're probably referring to is Storming Las Vegas. Also based on a book of the same name (subtitled "How a Cuban-Born, Soviet-Trained Commando Took Down The Strip to the Tune of Five World Class Hotels, Three Armored Cars, and Millions of Dollars"), Storming Las Vegas is a heist thriller about real-life casino robber Jose Vigoa, who masterminded a 16-month crime spree in Las Vegas during the '90s and is currently serving a 500+-year sentence, without possibility of parole.
Described by then-Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger as "one of the most dangerous criminals in the history of Clark County," Vigoa was a Cuban-born, Soviet-trained commando (hence that subtitle), who fought in Angola and Afghanistan and was responsible, among many other crimes, for the robbery of armored cars at MGM Grand, Desert Inn, Mandalay Bay, Bellagio, and New York-New York, not to mention the murder of two security guards in a Henderson shopping mall during a robbery-gone-wrong that was designed only to confuse the cops and throw them off his scent.
We found an interesting account of Vigoa's life prior to this period from a 2008 article on Bodog.com, where we learned that he fled Cuba during the Mariel boatlift and tried to make an honest living in Las Vegas, but found himself unable to support his family on casino wages. He first got busted for making cocaine deliveries, for which he served time; when paroled, Vigoa claims his criminal record made it hard for him to find employment, and that's when he came up with the plan to target the Brink's trucks.
Vigoa couldn't pull off his heists alone and, unfortunately for him, according to the article his crew consisted of a band of "bumbling fools", whose errors included such stupidity as leaving the getaway car in "drive" (Vigoa saw it rolling away and had to abort a robbery in progress), and accidentally leaving $2 million behind during another heist. Although Vigoa himself generally planned his crimes intelligently and meticulously, even his eventual undoing was a poor disguise that enabled Bellagio surveillance to get distinct images that eventually led to his arrest, following a 100 mph chase through the city.
According to the Internet Movie Database, Storming Las Vegas is still in production, with a 2014 release date penciled. We haven't seen any details of possible cast members, but Training Day director Antoine Fuqua, whose name has also been linked to a possible Tupac Shakur biopic, is in negotiations with Summit Entertainment to direct, while apparently Lorenzo di Bonaventura (G.I. Joe, Tranformers, Salt) has been approached to produce it. We also read that Summit's president of production, vice president of acquisitions and co-productions, and creative executive are overseeing the project, so it sounds like the studio is taking the project seriously. We'll keep you posted.
