24th June - Leo Getting Closer to Howard Hughes Biopic
22nd June - Leo, Coppola Not Bound for Godfather IV
18th June - Lit Lovin' Leo Eyes Dreamland
24th June, 1999
Leo Getting Closer to Howard Hughes Biopic
Earlier this week, speculation that Leonardo DiCaprio was making plans to star in a fourth Godfather movie made the rounds. Now Variety reports that the Titanic hottie has shifted focus and is zeroing in on a deal to star in a movie about the life of eccentric producer Howard Hughes for director Michael Mann (The Last of the Mohicans, Heat).
The Hughes movie is actually old news — DiCaprio and Mann were reported to be considering it earlier this year. At the time, rumor had it the script would be based on the critically praised biography Howard Hughes: The Untold Story, penned by Pat Broeske and Peter Harry Brown, but no screenwriter had yet become attached.
The latest word is that the project has landed at Disney, where Mann has a production deal, and that scribe John Logan has been contracted to draft a screenplay. Logan recently penned the script for Oliver Stone's pro football drama Any Given Sunday, set to be released this November, and also completed a draft of the script for RKO 281, an in-development drama about the making of Citizen Kane.
Logan is said to already have begun work on a Hughes screenplay, but he's not expected to have it ready to go any sooner than year's end, and could be working on it well into 2000.
DiCaprio, who completed work on director Danny Boyle's adaptation of The Beach in April, has been interested in doing a film with Mann ever since the two nearly collaborated on a James Dean biopic a couple of years back. (Interestingly enough, that project is still in development at Warner Bros. under the working title James Dean, with director Marc Rocco and star Stephen Dorff tentatively attached.)
Mann recently completed post-production work on his much-rumored film about the tobacco industry, due out in November, which stars Al Pacino and has most recently been reported to be titled The Insider.
Mann has written a script for a fact-based, father-son police drama, tentatively titled The Inside Man, that he and DiCaprio are also said to be considering as a possible alternative to working together on a Hughes film.
Courtesy of Mr Showbiz
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22nd June, 1999
Leo, Coppola Not Bound for Godfather IV
Put on your selective amnesia caps, kiddies — everyone has to pretend that the words Godfather IV, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Francis Ford Coppola never inspired rampant excitement.
Leo's rep, Cindy Guagenti, tells the New York Daily News, "This is all very premature. There's no script and no deal."
Furthermore, a representative for Coppola reports, "Francis says he has no plans to film a Part IV. He's deeply enmeshed in an original screenplay."
"Paramount could make a movie without him," the rep adds, "[but] I don't know whether anyone would come to see it." Sounds like Coppola won't fall for the studio's bullying again; Paramount "convinced" the director to take the helm of Godfather III, threatening to proceed with or without him.
Yesterday, The Hollywood Reporter said that the Oscar-winning director was considering offers to continue the Corleone family saga, with DiCaprio a candidate for a young Sonny Corleone.
Leo and Coppola are bound to keep busy regardless of the fate of IV; sources say DiCaprio has been cast in the new Martin Scorsese film Gangs of New York, and Coppola has more than two dozen projects on his production slate.
Courtesy of Mr Showbiz
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18th June, 1999
Lit Lovin' Leo Eyes Dreamland
Tip for booksellers: Stock up now on copies of Kevin Baker's Dreamland.
Leonardo DiCaprio has optioned the movie rights to the sprawling historical fiction opus, which chronicles the misadventures a feisty Eastern European immigrant against the backdrop of turn-of-the-century New York City.
The deal was handled through the Titanic star's Birken Productions company, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Author Baker could score a six- to seven-figure payday if Birken does indeed elect to purchase Dreamland's movie rights.
A movie adaptation would likely feature DiCaprio as the book's principal narrator, an immigrant rapscallion by the name of Kid Twist who makes a place for himself in the Jewish Mob after arriving on a steamer also carrying Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. After Kid has a falling out with his employer, Gyp the Blood, he flees to Brooklyn and, while hiding out there, meets and falls in love with a penniless, principled shirtwaist seamstress.
Baker's 512-page hardback hit bookstores in February and has drawn a number of rave reviews, with critics chiefly comparing it to E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime and the works of Charles Dickens.
If DiCaprio makes Dreamland his next movie project, it would mark his second straight film based on a widely praised and decidedly literary work. Since January, the hunky heartthrob has been sequestered in Thailand filming an adaptation of The Beach, British author Alex Garland's tale of a free-spirited backpacker who wanders through Southeast Asia searching for a utopian commune.
Production on The Beach is scheduled to wrap later this month — 20th Century Fox has penciled it in for a Christmas release — and DiCaprio's dance card is wide open thereafter.
There's also word in the Reporter that Keanu Reeves' next movie has landed a director. Howard Deutch (Pretty in Pink, Grumpier Old Men) will take the helm of The Replacements, which is set to begin production this summer.
Reeves — currently riding high thanks to the surprising success of The Matrix — will play a washed-up college quarterback who gets a second shot at his dreams of pro ball with the Washington Redskins during the infamous strike staged by the NFL Players Association in 1987.
Courtesy of Mr Showbiz
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