Leonardo DiCaprio Lines Up Another Biopic; Will Play The Music Producer Who Launched Elvis, Johnny Cash, and More
Leonardo DiCaprio has portrayed Howard Hughes, J. Edgar Hoover, Hugh Glass, Jordan Belfort, and Frank Abagnale Jr., but he's not done playing real people on the big screen just yet.
Deadline reports that on the heels of the announcement that the recent Oscar winner is gearing up to star in Truevine, DiCaprio is also looking to play famed music producer Sam Phillips in a new movie for Paramount Pictures. The studio just purchased the rights to a book called Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘N’ Roll, and DiCaprio's Appian Way Productions is developing the film adaptation and looking for a writer and director to come on board.
Phillips was the man behind Sun Records, and is described like this in the book:
The music that he shaped in his tiny Memphis studio with artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Ike Turner, Howlin' Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash, introduced a sound that had never been heard before. He brought forth a singular mix of black and white voices passionately proclaiming the vitality of the American vernacular tradition while at the same time declaring, once and for all, a new, integrated musical day.
Dallas Roberts played Phillips opposite Joaquin Phoenix in Walk the Line, which you can see in this scene:
No timetable yet for this one, but DiCaprio is now deciding between this, Truevine, and The Devil in the White City as his next project, so we'll hopefully be hearing an update about his decision soon.