From Vito Corleone to Rupert Pupkin to Travis Bickle, Robert De Niro has made a career of taking on challenging roles and making them household names.

Now, he'll step into the role of a household name -- and a name that bankrupted many a household -- Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff.

Cable network HBO has bought the rights to Truth and Consequences: Inside the Life of the Madoff Family, a book detailing the financier's swift fall from the penthouse to the penitentiary, and De Niro will play Wall Street’s fallen flimflam man. 

Novelist John Burnham Schwartz will pen the screenplay, Deadline reported.