BROOKLINE, Mass. (AP) – A movie about gangster James “Whitey” Bulger’s violent reign as leader of Boston’s criminal underworld got its first screening in the state Tuesday.
Johnny Depp, who plays Bulger in “Black Mass,” and other cast members including Dakota Johnson and Jesse Plem greeted fans and the media as they arrived to attend the private screening at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline.
Hundreds of people gathered to see the stars. Depp signed autographs for dozens lining the sidewalk across from the theater.
The movie is based on a book of the same name by former Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, who attended the screening. It chronicles Bulger’s rise to become the city’s most feared gangster, ruling its underworld from the 1970s into the 1990s while working with the FBI as an informant on the New England Mafia, his gang’s main rival.
Bulger fled Boston in 1994 after being tipped off by his FBI handler that he was about to be indicted. He lived as a fugitive for more than 16 years before he was captured in Santa Monica, California, in 2011.