EXCLUSIVE
Updated at 5 am PST:
The producer of “Gotti” refuted his director’s suggestion that Lindsay Lohan may not be cast in the film.
In a statement to TheWrap, Marc Fiore said:
“Lindsay Lohan is a talented and beautiful actress, she is in the film and will be playing the role of Kim Gotti. She will also be co-starring in our next film, ‘Mob Street,’” said Marc Fiore, president of Fiore Films and the producer of “Gotti: Three Generations.”
Earlier:
Director Barry Levinson is rewriting the script to “Gotti” and his new version seems unlikely to include a role for Lindsay Lohan, he told TheWrap in Cannes on Thursday.
“I didn’t (cast her) and we’ll have to see how this all works out,” he said, when asked about Lohan, who was first cast by Nick Cassavetes.
“We haven’t clarified that,” he said, referring to the actress’s status. “She’s possibly not (in the film) because she’s got her issues, and we also got to write the script, and then we’ll see where it is. I got involved and said ‘I’ll do this, but the existing script doesn’t work for me.’”
Lohan’s issues include a prison sentence last week for misdemeanor theft that will require her to serve 120 days and 480 hours of community service starting in June, though she may not have to do all of it. (Which reminds us; last year Lohan was in Cannes for 24 hours and lost her passport. ‘Member that?)
Read also: Lindsay Lohan Responds to Sentence: ‘I Support the Judge’s Ruling’
Levinson gave a broad-ranging overview of the project he has recently joined, and to which he has attracted star talent including Al Pacino and writer James Toback.
John Travolta, previously cast as John Gotti, Sr., is staying, said Levinson. “Travolta is terrific for that role.” Pacino will play Neil Dellacroce, a kind of godfather, mentor character to John Gotti Sr.
The veteran director has been brought on to the 
ambitious feature project project that he told TheWrap will probably begin shooting by the end of the year.
Why take on the Gotti family, TheWrap asked Levinson?
“I was offered the piece but what really sold me was I met with John Gotti Jr. two, three times just to get an understanding of it. And in talking to him, he’d tell me things – in terms of the organized crime family, or the personal side – and I began to hear things I’d never heard, it redefined it in ways that for me made something different, not a retread.”
So is this an authorized version?
“I guess you might say that. It’s the first time you’re getting insight from someone inside the Gotti family, the first time someone that high up in a crime family was willing to give the details.”
Also read: Al Pacino Back in the Mob: Joins Cast of ‘Gotti’
Is Gotti the hero of the film?
“When I did ‘Bugsy,’ was he the hero? In that particular movie, the glamour was the disguise of the man. But the Gottis are totally different. You try to demystify them.”
The movie will explore “how a crime family functions,” Levinson said. “The aspects of that were what intrigued me, but I don’t want to give that away. It’s the specificity of smaller moments that make up the piece. Go to ‘Diner,’ the smallest moments of the guys around the table that begin to color the thing.”
Levinson will rewrite the script with Toback. The film does not yet have distribution.
Levinson has also just completed a $2 million environmental horror film called “The Bay,” which will be out before the end of the year.