The movie is based off of John Gotti Jr's book "Shadow of my Father", and he's also involved in it. They were originally talking to Sly Stallone to play Gotti, but he dropped out. I think maybe one plus with Travolta is he might be able to catch some of the "charisma" Gotti had shown at least when dealing with the public. Idk. Hopefully he spent enough time hanging with Gotti Jr to get all the mannerisms down.