The Director's Chair > Martin Scorsese

The Wolf of Wall Street

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MacGuffin:
Scorsese, DiCaprio cry 'Wolf'
'Departed' duo visit Wall Street
Source: Variety
 
Martin Scorsese is looking to direct Leonardo DiCaprio in the film adaptation of Jordan Belfort's upcoming tell-all autobiography "The Wolf of Wall Street" for Warner Bros. Pictures, with "The Sopranos" scribe Terence Winter aboard to write.

Alexandra Milchan will produce with DiCaprio's shingle Appian Way, which has a first-look deal with Warners. Scorsese's Sikelia Prods. is attached to produce.

It's unknown, however, where "Wolf" stands on the list of potential directing projects that have been announced for Scorsese since the Academy Awards.

Deal with Warners for "Wolf" was consummated Friday night, following a brief but aggressive bidding war between Warners and Appian on one side and Paramount and Brad Pitt's shingle Plan B on the other.

Plan B wanted to produce for Par, where that shingle is based. Pitt wasn't necessarily attached to star.

Milchan, daughter of producer Arnon Milchan, and lit agent Joel Gotler, who repped the film rights to Belfort's book, ultimately decided to go with Warners because of the Scorsese-DiCaprio combo offered by Appian Way and the studio, although no official deals are in place for Scorsese to direct or DiCaprio to star.

In "Wolf of Wall Street" DiCaprio would play Belfort, a Long Island penny stockbroker who served 20 months in prison for refusing to cooperate in a massive 1990s securities fraud case that involved widespread corruption on Wall Street and in the corporate banking world, including mob infiltration.

Bantam Books publishes the autobiography in September.

Like "Catch Me if You Can," "Wolf" would be a two-hander with a key part for a second star: Much of the film would hinge on Belfort's relationship with the FBI agent who tried to make him an informant.

Milchan, who is producing the upcoming "Mary Queen of Scots" and "The Night Watchman," worked with Belfort in developing the film project and brought Winter aboard "Wolf" to write.

Winter is expected to begin adapting the tome immediately.

The bidding war between Paramount and Warners was preemptive, meaning that other studios didn't have the chance to bid.

Par does have the option to co-finance half of any project that Scorsese directs or produces elsewhere under the terms of its recently inked first-look deal with the filmmaker. A signed deal has to be in place before Par's option kicks in.

Scorsese has strong ties at Warners, where he made "The Departed," which earned him his first Oscar for director, along with the best pic prize. Paramount topper Brad Grey, then a producer, brought Scorsese aboard "Departed."

At Paramount, he's developing with an eye to direct "The Long Play," a rock 'n' roll epic to be penned by "Departed" scribe William Monahan. He's also attached to direct the bigscreen adaptation of Eric Jager's historical tome "Last Duel: A True Story of Crime."

Over at Warners, the studio and Graham King's Initial Entertainment Group recently picked up the screen rights to Brian Selznick children's novel "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" as a potential directing vehicle for Scorsese.

MacGuffin:
SCRIPTLAND: Scorsese's Oscar does not buy him freedom
The director's next possible project stalls as Warner Bros., Paramount battle over co-production.
Source: Los Angeles Times

Apparently, winning an Academy Award and scoring your biggest box office hit in four decades of filmmaking with the year's best picture doesn't buy you any smoother a ride in Hollywood. Right now, with Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. scrabbling over a suitable co-production arrangement, director Martin Scorsese's next potential project, "The Wolf of Wall Street," remains stuck in its cage.

On paper, the movie looks like a great investment: Scorsese once again directing his "Aviator" and "Departed" star Leonardo DiCaprio in an adaptation of the just-published cash-coke-and-corruption memoir "The Wolf of Wall Street" adapted by Emmy-winning "Sopranos" writer-producer Terence Winter. The hitch is that it's set up not at Paramount, where Scorsese has his directing deal, but at Warner Bros., the studio that released "The Departed."
 
"Wall Street," released last week by Bantam Books, is the autobiography of New York stockbroker Jordan Belfort, a flashy, drug-abusing, hooker-hiring, model-marrying master of the universe sent to jail for securities fraud and money laundering in the '90s. It's a juicy part for DiCaprio, and he and Scorsese are looking to make this their next movie, ideally completing production before any potential talent strike next summer.

But the film's immediate future remains iffy.

In late March, right after Scorsese finally won his directing Oscar, Warner Bros. and DiCaprio's Appian Way production shingle beat out Paramount and Brad Pitt's Plan B in a brief bidding war for the Scorsese-DiCaprio-Winter "Wall Street" package. But in November 2006, as "The Departed" was shooting its way past the $100-million mark for Warner Bros., Scorsese signed a four-year, first-look directing-producing deal with Paramount.

The hook, similar to arrangements Steven Spielberg has made with DreamWorks, was that if Scorsese were to make a film at a competing studio, Paramount had the option to own half of it and co-distribute. The director has personal and professional ties at both studios, so Scorsese and Co. have been trying to massage a preemptive deal between them before the film's likely greenlight.

But Scorsese may be sending mixed signals by having taken the Paramount deal (which reportedly is enormous) while Warner Bros. was in the midst of its "Departed" Oscar campaign and then turning around to push for his follow-up to be back at Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. and Paramount have other high-profile co-productions, such as "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and "Beowulf," which typically entail Paramount taking domestic distribution and Warner Bros. taking international. But thus far on "Wall Street," Warner Bros. has offered financial halfsies but no co-distribution, which Paramount has rejected.

Technically, Paramount's option isn't triggered until Scorsese's contracts are signed at Warner Bros. and the film is a go, but in the context of an impending strike, nailing the arrangement down as quickly as possible behooves all parties.

As it is, Scorsese has four other features in development at Paramount, which is also releasing his Rolling Stones documentary, "Shine a Light," sometime next year. And Warner Bros. has two other potential Scorsese projects, so there's plenty of the beatific Italian genius to go around. (And Scorsese, apparently finding himself under-committed, last week announced that he's also going to make a documentary about George Harrison over the next couple of years.)

The smart money's on everyone eventually deciding that they want to be in the Scorsese business even if it means sharing more than they'd like. If they don't, and this "Wolf" is released back into the wild, there's bound to be some howling.

ElPandaRoyal:
For some reason, I think this movie can be truly fascinating, as long as they don't make it "The Aviator II". I still would love for him to make "Silence".

Anyway, I hope they start shooting soon, for us to read the reports: "Marty's office was robbed and the thieves took some laptops, coke (both real coke and movie coke) and the director's Academy Award".

pete:
God I'm sick of these scorsese movies in which I already know how they end.

Pubrick:
i'm sick of these scorsese movies that aren't really scorsese movies. more like scorsese products.


--- Quote from: LA Times ---the Scorsese business

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