PARIS -- Vincent Cassel will play Jacques Mesrine, France's former Public Enemy No. 1, in a two-part project set to begin shooting next summer with Jean-Francois Richet directing from a script by Abdel Raouf Dafri, producer Thomas Langmann said Monday.

The two French-language films, with a total budget of €45 million ($53.6 million), entitled "Death Instinct" and "Public Enemy Number One," are based on the true story of a French criminal known for his clever disguises, womanizing and audacious bank robberies and jail-breaks.

Born to a prosperous family in 1937, Mesrine became a legend in his lifetime, reportedly wearing designer clothes and displaying impeccable courtesy to those he robbed, even as he performed the most daring heists in France and Canada through the 1970s. His death, at the hands of the French police in 1979, remains shrouded in controversy.

The project, announced at Cannes last year, ran into trouble after helmer Barbet Schroeder, scriptwriter Guillaume Laurant ("Amelie"), and financier-distributor UGC abandoned it following differences with Langmann.

Richet, who recently completed a remake of John Carpenter's 1976 cop thriller, "Assault on Precinct 13," will direct both films.