The wild man of Hollywood, the dictator's son and the tale of a mafia hitman

(EPA;REUTERS)

During his playing days as a professional footballer, Saadi Gaddafi managed two competitive appearances in four years in the Italian league, one of which lasted ten minutes. Fortunately, the second career of Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi's middle son as a Hollywood impresario is progressing a little better.

In one of the more unusual double acts to emerge from Los Angeles, the names of Gaddafi Junior and Mickey Rourke are being mentioned in the same breath after the one-time hardliving star accepted the leading role of a mafia hitman in a film financed by Saadi.

The Los Angeles production company into which Mr Gaddafi, 37, has poured $100m (£65m) announced that it has finalised a deal to make The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer – a biopic about Richard Kuklinski, a professional assassin who boasted of executing some of his reputed 250 victims by locking them in caves with hungry rats.

The venture is the third feature film to have been commissioned by Natural Selection, the movie investment firm run by a Jewish entrepreneur from New Jersey who persuaded Mr Gaddafi to turn his longstanding love of the big screen into the direct financing of entertainment in the country whose tempestuous relationship with Libya once provoked his father to state: "God damn America."

Matt Beckerman, the chief executive of Natural Selection, who persuaded Saadi to make his investment during three months of talks in 2008, announced the latest deal at the Toronto Film Festival, saying: "Richard Kuklinski's life is fascinating and unlike any mafia story that's been brought to the big screen. This is a role Mickey Rourke was born to play. I am thrilled to have him on board."

Saadi Gaddafi is reputed to be the favourite of his father's seven sons. His brothers include Hannibal, whose arrest at a Geneva hotel in July 2008 on suspicion of assaulting servants led to a full-blown crisis between Switzerland and Libya until Berne formally apologised for the "unjust arrest of Libyan diplomats".

It is understood Saadi takes a close interest in the progress of the films he is helping to finance, bringing with him the knowledge of American mass entertainment of someone who, according to Mr Beckerman, has watched the television series Lost 30 times.

Speaking last year when his investment was announced, Mr Gaddafi said: "As an avid film fan, I'm extremely excited about this adventure, working with Matty, and with an industry that I hold close to my heart. I have always held a strong affection towards the film industry and am proud I can now support it through my involvement here."

With three medium-budget films either recently released or being made, Gaddafi Junior has at least got further in his efforts to break into the cinematic big time than his father. In 2007, the Colonel announced he had put the finishing touches to his screenplay for Years of Torment, an epic retelling of Italy's invasion of Libya in 1911 and the derring-do of Omar Mukhtar, leader of the native resistance.

Despite the courting of various potential cast members, including Sir Anthony Hopkins and Sir Ben Kingsley, the abortive announcement of Omar Sharif in the main role and an announcement that filming would begin in April 2008, the production remains "in development".

Saadi has made it clear that he does not see the past tensions between the west and Libya as a source for concern about his investment strategy.

As well as documenting the life and times of Mr Kuklinski, who earned his nom de guerre from his technique of freezing corpses before later defrosting and dumping them to conceal the time of death, Natural Selection is making Isolation, a horror flick starring Susan Sarandon's daughter, and The Experiment, a remake of a German thriller starring Oscar winner's Adrien Brody and Forest Whitaker, which was premiered in South Korea last month and has since achieved the dubious honour of a general release on DVD.