That Leo DiCaprio kid, he don’t slow down for nothin’.  After narrowly (??) missing a little man statue for his portrayal of aeronautical genius/OCD icon Howard Hughes, he’s already latched onto a number of new projects.

Add another one to the list, because Leo’s been reading lately.  He and his production company Appian Way have picked up Kurt Vonnegut’s classic cataclysm novel Cat’s Cradle (Breakfast of Champions has been turned into a movie, but not this?). The typically abstract Vonnegut tale follows a writer who, in the course of researching his book, meets a physicist (the title alludes to the man’s recollection of what his father was doing when Hiroshima got bombed) who has created a substance called ice-nine.  Though originally developed to benefit soldiers, its secrets become entrusted to the scientist’s negligent children upon his death, and the apocalypse follows soon after.

It’s not known if DiCaprio plans to star in the project, but he’s got writers James V. Hart (Contact) and his kid Jake working on the script.  Hey, it’s not like he doesn’t have a full schedule already – he’s also working on a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel (with his Aviator colleagues Martin Scorsese and John Logan), an adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s political thriller The Chancellor Manuscript, and the mercenary movie The Blood Diamond with The Last Samurai director Ed Zwick.  He’s recently been in my neck of the woods shooting Scorsese’s The Departed, and I’ve even heard he’s been considering the title role in James Cameron’s Aquaman movie.

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