Benicio del Toro to star in DiCaprio's production

Actor Benicio del Toro will star in the upcoming Cuban-American crime saga "The Corporation", which will be co-produced by actor-filmmaker Leonardo DiCaprio's banner Appian Way and Paramount Pictures.

The banners have won an auction for T.J. English's upcoming book "The Corporation: An Epic Story of the Cuba American Underworld". The non-fiction book will be published in 2017 by William Morrow and will be adapted into a film by David Matthews, reports variety.com.

The story of the book centres on Jose Miguel Battle Sr, the leader of "The Corporation". Battle served as a key operative for Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista, bringing him his cut from the gambling casinos when the mafia ran Cuba.

Battle - also known as the Godfather - escaped to the US when Fidel Castro took over Cuba in 1959 and was trained by the CIA to invade the country at the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion. Having saved the lives of 28 of his men, he started out running a numbers racket and soon moved on to money laundering and murder.

Battle and his associates never gave up the dream of killing Castro and reclaiming Cuba as they became financiers of the anti-Castro movement. The Corporation would survive and grow until finally being brought down by a detective who pursued them relentlessly for over 15 years.