As Warner Bros. and director Ruben Fleischer get closer to making Tales From the Gangster Squad, the studio is aiming to add Josh Brolin to the line-up while closing deals with Sean Penn and Ryan Gosling.

You may know by now that Will Beall’s script adapts several LA Times articles by Paul Lieberman which tracked the records of the city’s police force in its attempts to crack down on rising crime and corruption in the 1940s. The so-called Gangster Squad was an elite corps of cops tooled up and ready to crack skulls.

Back at the end of last month, Warners stepped up to convince Penn and Gosling to sign on, but while both were interested – Penn in the pivotal role of gangster Mickey Cohen, Gosling as part of the team formed to bring him down alongside other East Coast criminals infiltrating LA – Penn was severely undecided and apparently passed at least once. Now the studio has come back with a new deal that has him pushing negotiations to the next stage. Presumably they offered him his own Tommy gun so he can blast a few paparazzi types.

There’s no word on what role Brolin will play if he signs, but it certainly sounds like an intriguing prospect. Given the cast that Fleischer is intent on collecting, this could be something great.