Leonardo DiCaprio is set to play an FBI informant who is said to have uncovered new evidence that the mafia murdered John F Kennedy in the latest drama to focus on the mystery surrounding the death of the late US president.

DiCaprio will take the role of Jack Van Laningham in Legacy of Secrecy, based on the similarly titled book by authors Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann about the 1963 assassination. The Oscar-nominated actor is also producing, along with his father, George, through his production company Appian Way. Variety reports that it was George who first brought his son's attention to the book.

Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination used declassified information from FBI files in the US National Archives and suggested that mafia godfather Carlos Marcello confessed to Van Laningham to having ordered JFK's assassination. The FBI is said to have covertly positioned its operative to become a confidant to Marcello, a Louisiana and Texas gangland kingpin throughout the 1940s, 50s and 60s.

Waldron and Hartmann's book also suggests that more than a dozen of Marcello's associates and family members were questioned or arrested by authorities in association with the JFK assassination. The mafia boss died in 1993. His name did not appear in the official 1964 Warren report into Kennedy's killing, but the 1979 House select committee on assassinations said he and Santo Trafficante "had the motive, means, and opportunity to assassinate President Kennedy".

The JFK assassination and its aftermath have been fertile material for film-makers over the years. Perhaps the most infamous movie is Oliver Stone's JFK, which challenged the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald carried out the murder and suggested Kennedy's death was a result of a conspiracy by the authorities themselves. Stone described his fictionalised film as a "counter-myth" to the "fictional myth" of the Warren commission.