Leonardo DiCaprio to play villain slave owner in DJANGO UNCHAINED?

It looks as though Quentin Tarantino may have a chance to work with Leonardo DiCaprio on Django Unchained. As you may recall, DiCaprio was sought by Tarantino for the role of Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds, before Christoph Waltz was cast. A recent tweet from Jeff Goldsmith, states that Tarantino has convinced DiCaprio to play the role of Calvin Candie, the villainous slave owner in the film. Goldsmith is the host of the podcast series "Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith" so it is highly likely that he has enough connections to know what he's talking about.

I never like to read a script for a film before it's released, unlike the many people that have. According to Katey Rich at Cinemablend, "Candie is reportedly a plantation owner and former owner of central character Django, an escaped slave." Earlier we reported that Will Smith may end up playing the title role.

Here's the previously released story description of the film:

Django is a freed slave, who, under the tutelage of a German bounty hunter becomes a bad-ass bounty hunter himself, and after assisting Waltz in taking down some bad guys for profit, is helped by Waltz in tracking down his slave wife and liberating her from an evil plantation owner. And that doesn’t even half begin to cover it! This film deals with racism as I’ve rarely seen it handled in a Hollywood film. While it’s 100 percent pure popcorn and revenge flick, it is pure genius in the way it takes on the evil slave owning south. Think of what he did with the Nazis in Inglorious and you’ll get a sense of what he’s doing with slave owners and slave overseers in this one.

As of right now, there is nothing other than Goldsmith's tweet to go on, so this is definitely a rumor. It's also not known how big of a role DiCaprio would have as Candie in the film. This would definitely be a departure from DiCaprio's other period roles, where he typically plays a hero or a conflicted anti-hero. 

DiCaprio is starring in The Great Gatsby this summer, which could conflict with Django. He may very well be attached to star in Django, but nothing is officially confirmed at this point. We will keep you posted as this story progresses. Until then, what are your thoughts on this rumor? Do you like the idea of DiCaprio playing a villain?