A couple of years ago Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio were developing The Wolf of Wall Street, a true tale of the rise and fall of a Wall Street douchebag. The movie fell apart, though, and the film has remained in limbo ever since.
Now it looks like Ridley Scott is stepping up to the plate, very taken with the script by Terence Winter (writer from The Sopranos and the upcoming Boardwalk Empire). Deadline describes the script as ‘funny, dramatic and fast paced, and manages to make something of a sympathetic character out of a stockbroker who supervises a cadre of brokers who squeezed clients to buy stocks that paid off–for the brokers, who used the funds to live extravagantly until they were brought down by the feds.’
Scott and Leo have worked together before, and the Deadline article makes it seem like Scorsese is very happy to pass the project on. I wish it was still Scorsese, but that’s because I like him in that mode – one that he’s been in a bunch of times and probably doesn’t really need to return to again. We’d just compare the movie to Goodfellas anyway.
It’ll certainly be a different animal under Scott, assuming he does direct it. He has the Alien prequel in the queue, and that sucker is the opener in a trilogy (which he may or may not direct). Scott Free Productions is coming aboard to coproduce with Leo’s Appian Way, so it’s possible that this shakes out with one of Ridley Scott’s million commercial director proteges on it.