Leonardo DiCaprio was either born to play Leonardo Da Vinci, or Leonardo the Ninja Turtle, and honestly I hope he does both before his career is over. But for now it's the former, as Deadline reports Paramount has won an epic 7-figure bidding war to acquire Walter Isaacson's book on Da Vinci, to become a feature film led by DiCaprio.
DiCaprio's mom has loved telling the story of how she named her son after feeling him kick while checking out a Da Vinci piece at Florence's Uffizi Gallery in 1974. True story? Pfft, who knows? If it ends up in the biopic on DiCaprio's life then we can take it as gospel. But for now it's all about Da Vinci, and Isaacson's book, which releases in October, is said to have "used Da Vinci’s notebooks to weave a narrative that connects his art to his science and voracious curiosity and imagination." Da Vinci was more than just a painter; he was a scientist, mathematician, inventor, and is always included in conspiracy theories/myths about secret societies that quietly rule the world. You have a ton of books to thank for that, from The Da Vinci Code to Marvel's S.H.I.E.L.D. comic.
So far there's no word on a director but this already has the hallmarks of an awards season film, and you can bet DiCaprio will demand a top notch filmmaker to work with.
It's been a quiet couple of years since DiCaprio won Best Actor for The Revenant. He'll rejoin Martin Scorsese for an adaptation of David Grann's book, Killers of the Flower Moon, and they may team up again for The Devil in the White City, which has been in the works for quite a while now.
