Troubled Italian movie mogul Vittorio Cecchi Gori has announced that he will produce a picture about another notorious Italian personality, seven-time prime minister Giulio Andreotti.

Directed by Pasquale Squitieri, the picture will be entitled The Trial Of The Century (Il Processo Del Secolo) and will focus on 84-year-old Andreotti's infamous decade-long trial for Mafia connections.

Cecchi Gori made the announcement just as Andreotti was acquitted this week of ordering the murder of Mino Pecorelli, a journalist who had been investigating Mafia crimes and connections in the '80s.

The Trial Of The Century is being written by Lino Jannuzzi, a senator from Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, and is expected to begin with the 1992 murder in Palermo of Andreotti's close political ally, Salvo Lima, Jannuzzi said.

Cecchi Gori said: 'I was lucky enough to be next to Giulio Andreotti when I was a senator. He is an amazing man - he wrote every detail of his life in his diary. That's how he's managed to survive these last ten years: he has been able to reconstruct every single fact. The film that I want to make about him will tell an extraordinary story. But we will stay away from politics as much as possible.'

Cecchi Gori himself has been the focus of entangled legal and financial wrangling over the last three years which saw his production, distribution and exhibition empire virtually crumble in a morass of bad debt and corruption charges.

However, Cecchi Gori, who has repeatedly said he believes he has been a 'victim of persecution' announced in Cannes this year that he is currently developing a new slate of films, including a picture about his own legal troubles which will be directed by Marco Risi (Three Wives). It is reportedly titled Blond Widow.

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