In a pre-emptive situation, MGM has secured a deal for the feature film project Jim Jones, with Leonardo DiCaprio in final talks to star as the 1970s religious cult leader who was behind the Jonestown mass suicide on November 18, 1978 that took more than 900 lives. The Oscar winner will produce for his Appian Way company alongside Jennifer Davisson.

MGM scooped up the Scott Rosenberg-penned script in what we hear was a seven-figure deal. The Venom scribe will also executive produce Jim Jones.

Jones founded the Peoples Temple in Indianapolis in 1955, and hailed it as a fully integrated congregation promoting Christian Socialism. By the 1970s he openly rejected traditional Christianity and claimed that he was God. He constructed Jonestown in Guyana in 1974 and spurred a following to live with him there as he touted a socialist paradise free from U.S. government oppression.

Amid rumors of human rights abuses, the American government sent a delegation led by U.S. Representative Leo Ryan in November 1978. Ryan, along with four others, would eventually be gunned down by Jones’ followers. Following the shooting, Jones orchestrated a mass murder-suicide of his followers, which took the lives of 918 commune members, 304 of them children, in an act that entailed drinking Flavor Aid laced with cyanide.

DiCaprio stars next in Netflix’s Adam McKay comedy Don’t Look Up opposite Jennifer Lawrence, Jonah Hill, Timothée Chalamet, Meryl Streep and Ariana Grande among others. He also stars next in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon for Apple Originals Films. DiCaprio has been nominated at the Oscars seven times and won Best Actor for 2016’s The Revenant.

DiCaprio is repped by LBI Entertainment and Hansen, Jacobson.

Rosenberg’s feature writing credits include Beautiful Girls, Con Air, High Fidelity, Gone in 60 Seconds, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Jumanji: The Next Level. He’s an executive producer on the upcoming miniseries Citadel, Epix/MGM’s From and Netflix’s live-action series Cowboy Bebop, as well as Hulu’s High Fidelity among several others. Rosenberg is repped by WME and Sloane, Offer.

With Jim Jones, MGM continues to bet on theatrical. The studio has a full dance card this awards season with Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci on November 24, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza on November 26 (it features a cameo by George DiCaprio, Leonardo’s father) and Joe Wright’s feature musical Cyrano on December 31. Their 25th James Bond movie, No Time to Die, is closing in on the $700 million global gross mark, the second highest-grossing title of the pandemic behind Universal’s F9.

As an actor and producer, DiCaprio’s movies have grossed over $7.9 billion worldwide. Since its launch, Appian Way has released a diverse slate of films including Alejandro González Iñárritu’s three-time Academy Award and Golden Globe winner The Revenant, Martin Scorsese’s Academy Award- and Golden Globe-nominated The Wolf of Wall Street and Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe-winning The Aviator. Other credits include Peabody winner Sea of Shadows, Shutter Island, Scott Cooper’s Out of the Furnace and George Clooney’s Golden Globe-nominated The Ides of March. Appian currently is in production on Shining Girls for Apple+ starring Elizabeth Moss.

Appian Way has put forth strong efforts in the documentary world, especially as it pertains to progressive environmental change. It recently worked in partnership with the History Channel on Grant, and National Geographic to produce Before the Flood. It also worked with Netflix on the Oscar-nominated Virunga, directed by Orlando von Einsiedel, and Kip Anderson’s Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret. Appian is in partnership with Netflix on several additional documentaries including The Ivory Game, How to Change the World and Catching the Sun. Recently released projects include Ice on Fire with HBO, And We Go Green for Hulu, Eli Roth’s Fin for Discovery+ and The Loneliest Whale.

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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.

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Netflix and Leonardo DiCaprio are reteaming for a feature adaptation to the documentary Virunga, which will be written by Oscar-winning Moonlight helmer Barry Jenkins. The Oscar-nominated docu, written and directed by Orlando von Einsiedel, was released on the streamer in 2014 and picked up an Oscar nomination.

DiCaprio, who served as an executive producer on the docu, is producing the project with his Appian Way partners Jennifer Davisson and Phillip Watson as well as Oscar-winner Joanna Natasegara for London-based Violet Films. von Einsiedel will serve as exec producer.

The true story follows rangers risking their lives to save Africa’s most precious national park and its endangered gorillas.

Jenkins, who was also lauded for his adaptation of James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk, is attached to direct Fox Searchlight’s biopic about Alvin Ailey, one of the most influential choreographers of the 20th Century. He also penned the screenplay to Rachel Morrison’s directorial debut, Flint Strong, and has a series adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s bestselling novel The Underground Railroad forthcoming on Amazon.

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Deadline hears that the tug of war over one of the highest profile films in Hollywood is about over. Apple will win the derby for the Martin Scorsese-directed film Killers Of The Flower Moon, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese in the lead roles. The deals are being papered — Paramount still has to sign off — but I’m told when they are, it will be an Apple original film, and Paramount will distribute theatrically worldwide.

Paramount had long ago acquired the project from Imperative Entertainment, but in recent weeks had allowed Scorsese and DiCaprio’s manager Rick Yorn to shop it around. Sources said that the studio was nervous about a price tag of $180 million to $200 million after tax credits from an Oklahoma location shoot, and studio brass liked the original Eric Roth draft better than the rewrite. Once Paramount allowed Yorn to take it to market, all studios from Universal to MGM and streamers including Scorsese’s The Irishman backer Netflix and Apple, have been chasing.

The deal, which calls for Apple to finance and become the creative studio, gives the movie a hybrid situation and the best of both worlds. The film will get a wide theatrical release through Paramount before it becomes the biggest film title so far on Apple’s streaming service. A big priority was for this a large scale Western and that was important to Scorsese, DiCaprio, De Niro and the film’s producers Dan Friedkin and Bradley Thomas at Imperative.

It’s the second huge movie deal for Apple, which Deadline recently revealed acquired Greyhound, the WWII film that stars Tom Hanks, who wrote the script. Clearly, Apple is making its move.

Killers of the Flower Moon has had a large profile since Imperative’s Friedkin and Thomas put the company on the map five years ago by outbidding the field to pay $5 million for the David Grann book Killers Of The Flower Moon: The Osage Murders And The Birth Of The FBI. The book is a mystery about a series of murders of wealthy Osage Native Americans in Oklahoma in the early 1920s, after oil deposits were discovered beneath their land. The ensuing investigation established the FBI and was a pivotal moment in the evolution of America from its frontier era.

Roth wrote the script and Scorsese and DiCaprio signed on early, with De Niro agreeing to join later. This is landmark stuff, Scorsese joining together his two most important acting collaborators, who haven’t worked together meaningfully in a film since This Boy’s Life, a breakout turn for DiCaprio, who has credited De Niro with showing him the possibilities that hard work could mean to an emerging actor/superstar.

Roth wrote the script and Scorsese and DiCaprio signed on early, with De Niro agreeing to join later. This is landmark stuff, Scorsese joining together his two most important acting collaborators, who haven’t worked together meaningfully in a film since This Boy’s Life, a breakout turn for DiCaprio, who has credited De Niro with showing him the possibilities that hard work could mean to an emerging actor/superstar.

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Leonardo DiCaprio is in negotiations to star in Fox Searchlight’s “Nightmare Alley,” Guillermo del Toro’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning film “The Shape of Water.”

Del Toro will direct the pic and co-wrote the script with Kim Morgan. “Nightmare Alley” is being produced and financed by del Toro and J. Miles Dale with TSG Entertainment, with Fox Searchlight acquiring worldwide distribution rights to the film.

While there is a 1947 Fox pic, this film will be more based on the William Lindsay Gresham novel of the same name. The 1947 movie starred Tyrone Power as an ambitious young con-man who teams up with a female psychiatrist who is even more corrupt than he is. At first, they enjoy success fleecing people with their mentalist act, but then she turns the tables on him, out-manipulating the manipulator.

The film shoots this fall as del Toro fills out the remaining roles.

After “The Shape of Water” went on to win several Oscars, including best picture and director for del Toro, the auteur decided to hold off on picking his next directing gig, only focusing his efforts as a producer on the Searchlight movie “Antlers.”

DiCaprio has not been seen in a movie since his Oscar-winning performance in “The Revenant” in 2015, choosing to take some time off before signing on to star in Quentin Tarantino’s next film, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” That pic, which also toplines Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, and centers on the Manson family murders, bows on July 26.

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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.

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Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese are officially reteaming.

Imperative Entertainment has attached Scorsese to direct and DiCaprio to star in the feature adaptation of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the New York Times best-selling book by David Grann.

Imperative acquired the rights to the book in 2016. DiCaprio and Scorsese quickly expressed interest in the project, and have been loosely attached since 2016.

Scorsese will produce alongside Imperative Entertainment’s Dan Friedkin, Bradley Thomas, Sikelia Productions’ Emma Tillinger Koskoff, and Appian Way Productions. Eric Roth is penning the script. The pic is expected to be both Scorsese and DiCaprio’s next project.

“When I read David Grann’s book, I immediately started seeing it — the people, the settings, the action — and I knew that I had to make it into a movie,” said Scorsese. “I’m so excited to be working with Eric Roth and reuniting with Leo DiCaprio to bring this truly unsettling American story to the screen.”

The story is set in 1920s Oklahoma and revolves around the Osage Nation, who were the richest people per capita in the world, after oil was discovered under their land and then they were murdered, one by one. As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case and unraveled a chilling conspiracy and one of the most monstrous crimes in American history.

Imperative Entertainment executives have met with the Osage Nation and the team is scouting locations in the coming months with production set to commence during the summer of 2019.

30WEST will arrange the financing and distribution for the project.

The project will mark the sixth film DiCaprio and Scorsese have worked on together, most recently teaming on the Oscar-nominated “The Wolf of Wall Street.” DiCaprio is currently filming Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and Scorsese is in post-production on his Netflix mob drama “The Irishman.”

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Paramount has hired high-profile writer John Logan to adapt Walter Isaacson’s biography “Leonardo da Vinci,” with Leonardo DiCaprio playing the painter/scientist.

DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson are producing through their Appian Way banner. Paramount won movie rights in August following a multi-studio bidding battle.

Logan’s screen credits include “Alien: Covenant,” “Genius,” the two most recent James Bond movies “Spectre” and “Skyfall,” and a trio of scripts that received Academy Award nominations — “Gladiator,” “The Aviator,” and “Hugo.” It’s Logan’s second collaboration with DiCaprio, more than a decade after he scripted the Howard Hughes biopic “The Aviator.”

DiCaprio is starring next in the untitled Quentin Tarantino movie about the Manson Family. The actor has a strong connection to the da Vinci project: he got his first name from the famous painter, as his pregnant mother was looking at a da Vinci painting in a museum in Italy when the future star kicked for the first time.

Isaacson’s book, published by Simon & Schuster in October, was based on thousands of pages from da Vinci’s notebooks and focused on his passionate curiosity, careful observation, and imagination. In addition to painting the “Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper,” he pursued studies of anatomy, fossils, birds, the heart, flying machines, botany, geology, and weaponry.

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