Grain of salt time, folks. It used to be that major news got broken via one of the trades, like Variety or THR, and that's still true, but a lot of the time it's a key insider tweeting this stuff first. Case in point, Jeff Goldsmith, formerly of the Creative Screenwriting podcast had this to say just a few hours ago....
"Casting Rumor: Leonardo DiCaprio WILL play villian Calvin Candie in Tarantino's Django Unchained! QT wanted him for I.B. & now has him!"
Goldsmith was one of the first to tweet about Will Smith's potential involvement in Tarantino's racially charge spaghetti Western, and that has certainly turned out to be true. Although recently there's been speculation that Idris Elba might be meeting for the lead role right now.
As for DiCaprio, Variety reported a few weeks ago that Tarantino had written the role of Dr. Schultz, the German bounty hunter aiding Django in his quest for vengeance, for DiCaprio. However DiCaprio passed, and the role was shifted to better suit Christoph Waltz. It'll probably take a bit more tweaking to make the villain part fit for DiCaprio, I'm sure Tarantino would be more than happy to do it considering this would give him the A-list star he's clearly looking for.
I just wonder if this will interfere with DiCaprio's shooting of The Great Gatsby, which Baz Luhrmann is said to be primed to shoot in early fall. Django Unchained is set for a fall shoot as well, so something would have to be worked out there.
Where I couldn't see the squeaky clean Will Smith soiling his reputation with a film like this, DiCaprio is another story. He's basically bulletproof as an actor, and he's played his share of not so good people before. Never one quite as clear cut evil as Calvin Candie would be, but it's not going to hurt DiCaprio's cred to do it. Here's hoping this one turns out to be true. I doubt Goldsmith was just tweeting out of his butt.
