The adaptation of Jordan Belfort’s memoir The Wolf Of Wall Street is one of those projects that has been floating around the higher echelons of Hollywood for a while now. Martin Scorsese and current muse Leonardo DiCaprio have been pondering making it as their fifth collaboration for almost as long as it’s been on the development market, and now Deadline reports that the pair want to have the cameras rolling this coming August.
Belfort’s book chronicled his indulgences and hard-living world as a stockbroker in 1990s New York. For a while it was all big pay cheques and mad parties, but then came the Gordon Gekko-style reality check and a less-than-enjoyable time spent in the slammer.
Word on the film first hit in 2007, with Scorsese attached, Leo starring and Sopranos veteran / Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter working on the script. But though studio tensions between Paramount and Warner Bros. scuppered that original version, DiCaprio stayed aboard and Ridley Scott briefly flirted with the idea of directing the film. Once again, nothing quite worked out.
Then last year, Scorsese jumped back aboard and began to drum up the financing to finally get the project made. While his PR reps pointed to him focusing on getting passion project Silence made first (after he’d finished promoting Hugo, of course), it now looks like the Wolf will howl before anything else.
Red Granite Pictures, which helped finance Jon Hamm comedy-drama Friends With Kids, has offered to fund the film as an indie and will be selling rights around the world at Cannes. Given the talent both in front of and behind the camera (Winter will be busy polishing his script in between thinking up violent things for Steve Buscemi to do on Boardwalk), we doubt it’ll be long before the studios come courting to distribute this thing both in the US and over here.