Leonardo DiCaprio as Bond creator Ian Fleming in upcoming biopic?
Actor said to be interested in playing the man who created one of the most famous literary and film heroes of the 20th century and beyond.
As Hollywood has bled dry most literary works from the world's most famous authors past and present, a recurring movement recently seems to be developing flicks based around the lives of those writers themselves. Miss Potter, Finding Neverland, Becoming Jane and so on and so on. So when I first heard the news of a biopic of Bond creator Ian Fleming, it struck me as a feature I was surprised I hadn't seen already.
There's an article in yesterday's L.A. Times which mentions that popular biopic actor Leonardo DiCaprio (already played aviator Howard Hughes & forger Frank Abagnale Jr.)is closing in on a deal to play Fleming in an upcoming biopic from writer Damian Stevenson - who sold this script as his first Hollywood deal back in 2005 with WB."It's going to be very different from the Bond films," says producer Andrew Lazar ("Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," "Get Smart"), who first championed the project. "There are a lot of different ways to crack biopics, but we're not trying to emulate a Bond movie . . . The idea that this guy's life informed the James Bond character is pretty fascinating."Plot details...
His latest version of the screenplay begins on the eve of Fleming's Jamaica wedding in 1952, just before his first Bond novel, "Casino Royale," was published (a wedding present to his new wife). It then flashes back to Fleming's years as a Reuters journalist stationed in Moscow and then a Commander of Naval Intelligence (MI6 code name "17F") during World War II who devised innovative spying plots. Fleming later drew from his own playboy life and his espionage contemporaries' to invent one of literature and film's most enduring characters.It's said that during the WGA strike when DiCaprio had a few weeks off work - he became suddenly fascinated with the life of Fleming and soon began showing interest in the project, although it's believed that he wants to bring a new writer on board to mold the script into something more of his liking. More on Fleming's life can be seen below. I've actually just today got the book For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond by Ben Mcintrye which I've heard is one of the best accounts of Fleming out there but I can't actually recommend it yet because I haven't started reading it. Love Bond... love the books... love the movies... DiCaprio is one of the best around. Nuff said? source - aicn