The Wolf of Wall Street

[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.

the Scorsese business

[soixante]

Variety just reported YET another Scorsese-DiCaprio pairing, Shutter Island, based on a Dennis Lehane novel.

[MacGuffin]

Ridley Scott Eyeing Reteam With Leo DiCaprio On 'The Wolf Of Wall Street'
By MIKE FLEMING, Deadline Hollywood
   
EXCLUSIVE: The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort's memoir of 1990's stockbroker decadence, is back on the prowl. I'm hearing that  the film is being put back together, with Ridley Scott in early discussions to direct Leonardo DiCaprio, who once expected to make the film with Martin Scorsese. In the scenario under discussion, Scorsese would join DiCaprio and his Appian Way shingle as producer, and it is likely that Scott Free would board the project in a producing capacity as well. Scorsese and DiCaprio nearly did the project together two years ago, but it got stalled in a tug of war between Warner Bros--where the project was developed--and Paramount, the latter of which gave Scorsese a rich overall deal. Instead, Scorsese and DiCaprio teamed on an adaptation of the Dennis Lehane novel Shutter Island.  The Wolf of Wall Street is still in the process of being figured out for budget and distribution, but Scott loves the script by Terry Winter (the writer/producer of The Sopranos and the upcoming HBO series Boardwalk Empire). It is 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.

I'm told that Scorsese--who's directing for GK Films the 3D adaptation of The Invention of Hugo Cabret-- is willing to pass the baton to Scott, who directed DiCaprio in Body of Lies. Scheduling is an issue for all involved. It is unclear whether Scott can squeeze in the film before the 3D Alien prequel, a priority project for the director's home studio, Fox. DiCaprio, who opens next week in the Chris Nolan-directed Inception, is next expected to play FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in the Clint Eastwood-directed biopic Hoover for Imagine Entertainment and Warner Bros.

[MacGuffin]

Martin Scorsese And Leonardo DiCaprio Committing To 'The Wolf Of Wall Street' For August; Red Granite Fully Funding
BY MIKE FLEMING | Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: Director Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio are committing to make The Wolf of Wall Street their fifth collaboration. The film is based on the Jordan Belfort memoir of his days as a hard partying, drug addicted stockbroker who was indicted in 1998 for security fraud and money laundering and served a 22-month federal prison stretch. Shooting will begin August in New York.

The film will be fully financed by Red Granite Pictures, which acquired The Wolf Of Wall Street at the last Cannes Film Festival after Danny Dimbort, Christian Mercuri and Joe Gatta formed the international sales company. Red Granite got involved early with the just released comedy Friends With Kids, but this really is an opportunity to be put on the map, much the way GK Films did with Gangs of New York and The Aviator. The film will be produced by Scorsese and his production head Emma Tillinger Koskoff as well as Irwin Winkler, DiCaprio and his Appian Way partner Jennifer Killoran, and Alexandra Milchan, who long developed the project before becoming an executive at New Regency. Red Granite chairman/CEO Riza Aziz and vice chairman Joey McFarland will be involved in producing capacities as well. There is no timetable to set a domestic distributor, but Red Granite will certainly sell territories at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival.

Both Scorsese and DiCaprio were in the mix for several big feature projects, but they always wanted to make this film together and finally felt the time was right. The script is by Terence Winter, the exec producer of The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire, and he will polish his script before going into production. Belfort came of age on Wall Street in the '80s and early '90s, and his success was undermined by the decadence fueled by the endless money he made in New York at that time. Though a period piece, this tale is all about extravant excess and that certainly resonates with those who mistrust of Wall Street excess after the 2008 financial collapse that was also based on greed.

For Scorsese, this will be his fifth time directing DiCaprio, after Gangs of New York, The Aviator, the Oscar-winning The Departed and Shutter Island. DiCaprio has a ways to go to catch up with the eight seminal films that Scorsese directed with Robert De Niro, but Scorsese and DiCaprio certainly bring out the best in each other. Scorsese is coming off his Oscar-nominated 3D film Hugo, and DiCaprio most recently wrapped the title role in the Baz Luhrmann-directed The Great Gatsby.

[P Heat]

Ok , so i was watching "the 25th hour", mostly bcuz I read it had PSH in it and enjoyed it. I thought the movie itself was OK, but PSH's side story was GREAT! and hilarious. One scene i liked and decided to youtube was the so called "broker scene". I then clicked on one of the similar videos where it said the wolf of wall street (not knowing about the upcoming movie) and it is about the Jordon Belfort, the guy the movie is gonna be based on. He lived that crazy scarface life! and his story of destroying  a multi million dollar yacht filled with drugs is his most popular story. He even has a youtube video talking about being on set with DeCaprio and Marty.

that said, this is guy is definitely a Scorsese character, which is obviously why he picked him. He is like a Henry Hill, or LaMotta, and closet to Rothstein (Casino). I hope this upcoming film for Marty will be in same family as those other past greats (pre 2000's) and hope he still has it in him to do so. The only thing that has me worried its not going to be is that DeCrapio is starring in it.

[MacGuffin]

Official: Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio Team Up for 'The Wolf of Wall Street'
The director and his actor-muse will reunite on the film about a troublemaking banker.
Source: THR

Martin Scorsese is partnering with his muse, Leonardo DiCaprio, on The Wolf of Wall Street, their fifth film collaboration.

The movie is based on Jordan Belfort's 2008 memoir about his hedonistic run on Wall Street as a risk-taking, drug-using, high-level investment banker. DiCaprio will, of course, portray Belfort.

The Scorsese-DiCaprio reteaming had been rumored for months but was made official in an announcement on Thursday.

Riza Aziz and Joey McFarland of Red Granite Pictures, which owns the rights to the book, will produce with DiCaprio's Appian Way, Scorsese and Emma Koskoff's Sikelia Productions and Alexandra Milchan's EMJAG Productions. Irwin Winkler and Georgia Kacandes will executive produce.

"Everything about this film plays to Martin Scorsese's genius and visionary storytelling," said Aziz in a statement. "At its heart, 'The Wolf of Wall Street' is about the rise of new 'modern' gangsters in New York. Wall Street gangsters that redefined excess, greed and arrogance. We're excited to see Mr. Scorsese take the reins of this visceral, tumultuous ride."

Production begins August in New York, with a screenplay adapted by Terence Winter (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire).

[chere mill]

scorsese making a film about the corruption of wall street has enormous potential. his impulse to make a gangster film is evidently still persistent, albiet of a different type.

[I am Schmi]

"At its heart, 'The Wolf of Wall Street' is about the rise of new 'modern' gangsters in New York."


Yeah, I can agree with that.

[Pubrick]

scorsese making a film about the corruption of wall street has enormous potential.

I wish he were more interested in the corruption of our fucking souls and made Silence already.

But maybe the last decade has given him more insight into money obsession so this material seems like a natural fit.

[wiped_out]

I have the script if anyone wants it, I am looking for the script for Low Life and P.T Anderson's Lowlife, but I will glady send wolf to anyone who PMs me..

Also if anyone has any Roger Avary script I would enjoy reading anything that man has written.

[MacGuffin]

Jonah Hill Set To Star With Leonardo DiCaprio In Martin Scorsese-Directed 'The Wolf Of Wall Street'
BY MIKE FLEMING | Deadline

BREAKING: After getting an Oscar nomination playing Brad Pitt's wing man in Moneyball, Jonah Hill has just been set to star alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf Of Wall Street, the Martin Scorsese-directed adaptation of the Jordan Belfort memoir. Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter wrote the script.

The film chronicles Belfort's dramatic rise and fall on Wall Street, along with his hard-partying lifestyle and tumultuous personal life, which included drug and alcohol addiction. Hill will play his close friend, who becomes Belfort's business partner when the charismatic stock broker persuades him to quit his job in the furniture business to jump into the lucrative, volatile world of stocks.

Red Granite Pictures principals Riza Aziz and Joey McFarland stepped up to make the picture happen, and they are producing along with Appian Way's DiCaprio, Sikelia Production' Scorsese and Emma Koskoff, and EMJAG Productions' Alexandra Milchan. Irwin Winkler and Georgia Kacandes will executive produce. Hill is repped by WME and Karl Austen.

Hill is coming off 21 Jump Street, the hit comedy that just crossed $175 million at the global box office. He next stars with Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn in The Watch, the comedy that had previously been titled Neighborhood Watch at Fox.