Catherine Zeta Jones has landed the role of a drugs kingpin in real-life crime biopic The Godmother.

According to Deadline, the actress will star as Griselda Blanco, who was at the centre of the US gangland drugs violence in the 1970s and 80s.

Nicknamed Black Widow and the Cocaine Godmother, she was the first and only woman to rise to the higher echelons of Colombia's Medellin drug cartel.

The Colombian-born drugs boss, who is suspected of ordering hundreds of assassinations, was a multi-millionaire by her forties.

In 2004, she was deported back to Colombia after a long stretch in prison, and years later she was killed in a drive-by shooting.

The movie will be directed by Norwegian filmmaker Eva Sorhaug.

Catherine played the wife of a drug lord in 2000's Traffic and last starred in Red 2 last year, alongside Dame Helen Mirren and Bruce Willis.