April 21st, 2018
Turner Classic Movies has selected Leonardo DiCaprio to present Martin Scorsese with the inaugural Robert Osborne Award as part of the 2018 TCM Classic Film Festival’s opening.
DiCaprio has appeared in five of Scorsese’s films, beginning with 2002’s “Gangs of New York” and most recently in 2013’s “The Wolf of Wall Street.” DiCaprio will present the award April 26 in Los Angeles to the filmmaker for his decades-long commitment to the legacy and preservation of classic films.
In 1990, Scorsese established the Film Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting and preserving motion picture history. The foundation has funded the restoration of over 800 films and its World Cinema Project has restored 31 films from 21 countries.
The Robert Osborne Award will be given out annually at the TCM Classic Film Festival to a recipient whose work has helped keep the cultural heritage of classic films alive.
Sources
March 1st, 2018
Brad Pitt is joining Leonardo DiCaprio in Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Manson movie, which will be titled “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”
Tarantino, who is writing and directing, describes the project as “a story that takes place in Los Angeles in 1969, at the height of hippy Hollywood.
DiCaprio will play Rick Dalton, former star of a western TV series, while Pitt will be his longtime stunt double, Cliff Booth.
“Both are struggling to make it in a Hollywood they don’t recognize anymore. But Rick has a very famous next-door neighbor…Sharon Tate,” Tarantino added.
“I’ve been working on this script for five years, as well as living in Los Angeles County most of my life, including in 1969, when I was 7 years old,” Tarantino said in a statement. “I’m very excited to tell this story of an L.A., and a Hollywood that don’t exist anymore. And I couldn’t be happier about the dynamic teaming of DiCaprio & Pitt as Rick & Cliff.
Sources
February 3rd, 2018
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.
Sources
January 26th, 2018
Sundance TV has greenlit three docuseries, including one of which will be executive produced by Leonardo DiCaprio.
From Appian Way and Emmy Award-winning Stephen David Entertainment, The Road to Jonestown (w/t) will air this November to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the massacre that claimed the lives of 900 people.
The series, from executive producers DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson of Appian Way, as well as author Jeff Guinn and Stephen David of Stephen David Entertainment, is based on the best-selling book by Guinn.
The series will show how Jim Jones transformed from a charismatic preacher and champion of civil rights into an egomaniacal demagogue who led the biggest mass suicide in American history. Never-before-seen archival footage, unreleased photographs, personal letters and previously classified documents, as well as interviews with survivors and Jones family members who have not previously spoken on the record, will aim to uncover Jones’ motives.
Sources
