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Film Premiere of Aladdin

Source: Apega/WENN.com / WENN

Will Smith‘s next project is back at Netflix and he’s playing a legendary crime boss!

Smith will play Nicky Barnes in the upcoming film The Council, a movie based around the never-before-told story of a crime syndicate consisting of seven African-American men who ruled Harlem in the 1970s and early 1980s. Per the synopsis, “No ordinary crime syndicate, the men dreamed of a self-sufficient and self-policing African American city-state, funded by revolutionizing the drug game.”

Wow. The movie apparently centers on the court intrigue between The Council’s Nicky Barnes aka ‘Mr. Untouchable’ and all the different members as one unlikely rising protégé emerges.

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Remember, we found out that Barnes actually passed away earlier this year and he had lived a life of being rather anonymous after he was arrested in 1978 on racketeering and drug charges. He was sentenced to life in prison but turned government informant and placed in Witness Protection.

The film doesn’t have a director attached but Smith won’t be the first Nicky Barnes on screen. In 2005, Sean “Diddy” Combs played Barnes in the Carlito’s Way prequel, Carlito’s Way: Rise To Power and in 2009, Cuba Gooding Jr. portrayed Barnes in American Gangster starring Denzel Washington.

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Will Smith To Star As Nicky Barnes In Netflix’s ‘The Council’  was originally published on theboxhouston.com