Leonardo DiCaprio can’t play a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle – if only because that job is currently taken – but that won’t stop him from playing the other “Leonardo” we can all name off the top of our heads. The Oscar-winning star of The Revenant will play famed Renaissance painter and inventor Leonardo da Vinci in an upcoming film.
Paramount Pictures won a bidding war over the Leonardo da Vinci biopic, according to Variety. The film will be based on Leonardo da Vinci, the new biography written by Walter Isaacson, which will be released on October 17, 2017. It’s not the first film to be based on one of Isaacson’s many non-fiction books. His biography of Steve Jobs, aptly titled Steve Jobs, was turned into an Oscar-nominated drama starring Michael Fassbender, written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle in 2015.
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It’s a fitting project for Leonardo DiCaprio, whose first name is no mere coincidence. His parents named him “Leonardo” when they were visiting a museum while the actor’s mother was pregnant. While they were looking at a Da Vinci painting, according to DiCaprio himself, the actor began kicking. So it might seem like a silly gag that Leonardo DiCaprio will actually play Leonardo da Vinci, but it’s actually a good old-fashioned case of dramatic foreshadowing.
No director or screenwriter have been announced for the Leonardo da Vinci biopic, but Leonardo DiCaprio will be producing the film. DiCaprio won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2015 for his physically punishing role in The Revenant, but he has not appeared in a motion picture since.
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William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on Canceled Too Soon and watch him on the weekly YouTube series What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
