Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep and Timothee Chalamet will join Jennifer Lawrence in the star-studded cast of “Don’t Look Up,” a new Netflix comedy from Adam McKay.

Jonah Hill and Himesh Patel will also star, along with Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi and Matthew Perry. As previously announced, Cate Blanchett and Rob Morgan are part of the cast.

McKay, the filmmaker behind “Step Brothers,” “Anchorman,” “Talladega Nights” and “The Big Short,” wrote and directed “Don’t Look Up,” which follows two low-level astronomers who embark on a media tour to warn mankind of an impending asteroid that could destroy the planet. Lawrence and DiCaprio are expected to play the two astronomers, but Netflix would not confirm.

The movie is scheduled to start filming before the end of the year.

McKay is also producing the film with Kevin Messick under McKay’s Hyperobject Industries banner.

Ahead of “Don’t Look Up,” DiCaprio is starring in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” adaptation. Streep has another Netflix film, Ryan Murphy’s “The Prom,” up next, along with Steven Soderbergh’s HBO Max comedy “Let Them All Talk.” Chalamet, who previously starred with Streep in Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” remake, has “Dune,” “The French Dispatch” and James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic “Going Electric” on deck. Patel, the breakout of Universal’s musical rom-com “Yesterday,” recently appeared in Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet.”

McKay’s most recent movie, “Vice” — a scathing biopic about former Vice President Dick Cheney — was nominated for eight Oscars, including best picture. McKay won an Academy Award for 2015’s “The Big Short,” nabbing the prize for adapted screenplay.

Sources

Appian Way Productions’ Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson have set the production company into a multi-picture, multi-year first look deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment to produce scripted feature films. The companies are already in development on two projects and the deal comes off DiCaprio’s turn in the Quentin Tarantino-directed Best Picture nominee Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood.

Deal follows one that Appian Way made at Apple for TV projects and documentaries.

Said Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group Chairman Tom Rothman: “I first met the supernova talented Leonardo DiCaprio over 24 years ago on Romeo and Juliet. We then shipped out together on the Titanic and my admiration for him as a fully-rounded filmmaking genius has only increased over the many years since. His producing and acting instincts — superbly supported by Jennifer — are both driven by service to the best material in the world. At Sony, we feel like we just landed a rare GOAT deal — as Michael Jordan and Tom Brady are to basketball and football, so is Leo to film.”

Said DiCaprio: “For over three decades in the business, Tom has never adhered to the traditional Hollywood norms. Never once taking the safe route, he truly values filmmakers and their vision and is extremely supportive of the theatre-going experience. I could not be more excited to enter into a new phase of partnerships with Sony.”

Appian Way’s last deal had been at Warner Bros. He won the Best Actor Oscar for The Revenant, and has been nominated six other times, the last being Sony and Tarantino’s love letter to Hollywood, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. Appian Way productions include The Revenant, and the Martin Scorsese-directed The Wolf of Wall Street, The Aviator, and Shutter Island.

Appian Way is repped by LBI Entertainment.

Sources

Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way and In Good Company Films are developing the utopian series “Island,” based on Aldous Huxley’s novel “Island.”

Huxley’s final book, published in 1962, follows a cynical journalist shipwrecked on the fictional utopian island of Pala in the Indian Ocean. Originally tasked with exploiting Pala’s natural resources, he uncovers an independently developed society and embraces the people, their culture and traditions — including psychedelic adventures and alternative social structures. His experience alters the course of his mission.

Huxlery wrote “Island” as the utopian counterpoint to his most famous work, the 1932 dystopian novel, “Brave New World.” “Island” explores the themes of freedom and the power of human potential. Huxley died of cancer in 1963.

Davisson and DiCaprio will executive produce for Appian Way along with George DiCaprio and Roee Sharon. Andrew Alter and Jason Whitmore will executive produce for IGC Films.

Appian Way launched in 2004 as a production company and has producing credits on more than a dozen feature films, including “The Aviator,” “Shutter Island,” “The Ides of March,” “Runner Runner,” “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “The Revenant,” “Robin Hood” and “Richard Jewell.”

Appian Way worked with Netflix on the documentaries “Virunga,” “Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret,” “The Ivory Game,” “How to Change the World” and “Catching the Sun” and with National Geographic on “Sea of Shadows.” The company’s television credits include “Greenberg,” the “Grant” miniseries on History and the upcoming “The Right Stuff” miniseries for Disney Plus.

Sources

Leonardo DiCaprio is continuing his work to support Africa’s Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Earth Alliance, which was co-founded by DiCaprio, Emerson Collective and Global Wildlife Conservation, has partnered with the European Commission to launch the Virunga Fund with $2 million in seed money.

The Virunga Fund will help protect the national park, as well as surrounding communities. Virunga has lost a significant amount of revenue since closing in March due to COVID-19.

The fund’s goals include disease prevention efforts, protection of the mountain gorilla and other species and support of law enforcement and families of fallen rangers.

“I had the great honor of meeting and supporting Virunga’s courageous team in their fight against illegal oil drilling in 2013,” said DiCaprio, who produced the 2014 Netflix documentary “Virunga.” “Virunga urgently needs funds to protect the endangered mountain gorilla population, to provide support to the rangers and the families of rangers who have fallen in the line of duty, and to help deliver essential disease prevention efforts. It’s critical that we rally together during this time of incredible crisis.”

According to the fund, 12 Virunga rangers, a driver and four members of the local community were killed in April in an attack by a militia group.

“The COVID-19 pandemic underscores just how profoundly interconnected life is on our planet and how protecting nature’s balance is critical to our health and economic security,” said Brian Sheth, Global Wildlife Conservation board chair and co-founder and president of Vista Equity Partners. “The heroism of Virunga’s rangers does not just benefit the wildlife and local communities that live in and near the park, but all life on Earth. We are calling on the global community to join us in helping to support and protect these guardians and the irreplaceable wildlife and wildlands they protect.”

DiCaprio also recently joined forces with Laurene Powell Jobs and Apple and the Ford Foundation to launch America’s Food Fund, a fundraising initiative that has raised over $26 million with the goal of ensuring reliable access to food. The fund benefits Feeding America, World Central Kitchen, No Kid Hungry, Urban School Food Alliance and Save the Children US.

Additionally, the Oscar-winner raised more than $1.6 million by offering a set visit to his next film, “Killers of the Flower Moon” for the viral All In Challenge, which benefits America’s Food Fund, as well as No Kid Hungry and Meals on Wheels.

Sources

I have add 57 HQ photos of Leo at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards on January 05

Hulu is developing a series based on the book “The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America” by Erik Larson.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese will executive produce the project along with Stacey Sher, Rick Yorn, Emma Koskoff, and Jennifer Davisson. Paramount Television will produce.

“The Devil in the White City” tells true story of two men, an architect and a serial killer, whose fates were forever linked by The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893: Daniel H. Burnham, a brilliant and fastidious architect racing to mark his mark on the world and Henry H. Holmes, a handsome and cunning doctor who fashioned his own pharmaceutical “Murder Castle” on the fair grounds.

This is the latest chapter in the long development history of the book. DiCaprio acquired the rights nearly a decade ago with plans to adapt it as a film in which he would star as Holmes. Scorsese came onboard to direct in 2015 with Billy Ray set to write the script. It was first put in development in Hollywood by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner through their Cruise/Wagner banner via the shingle’s deal with Paramount, but the option lapsed in 2004. Paramount reacquired the film rights in 2007 and set it up with producers Michael Shamberg and Sher.

Sources

Leonardo DiCaprio and Jessica Biel are in talks to executive produce the comedy, which does not yet have a network.
The Facts of Life could be returning to TV.

Sony Pictures Television, which owns distribution rights to the sitcom, is in early talks to reboot the Diff’rent Strokes spinoff that originally aired on NBC for nine seasons and more than 200 episodes. A network is not yet attached and a search for a writer is underway.

Sources say Leonardo DiCaprio and Jessica Biel are in early talks to executive produce the reboot via their respective Appian Way and Ocean Films production companies. Sony TV declined comment.

The series, which starred Charlotte Rae, Lisa Whelchel, Kim Fields, Mandy Cohn and Nancy McKeon, is one of the longest-running comedies of the 1980s and revolved around a housemother and her students at the all-female Eastland School in New York. The multicamera comedy was created by Dick Clair and Jenna McMahon.

Sources