After kicking off his career as a supporting schlub in movies such as** I Heart Huckabees** and the work of Judd Apatow, Jonah Hill has graduated to become one of the driving forces of the comedy movie world, writing and producing films including this year’s great 21 Jump Street. Last year, he also showed a more dramatic side, scoring an Oscar nomination for Moneyball. He’s going one step further with his latest announced job, joining the cast of Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street.
Hill has locked in the role of Danny Porush, who is convinced by best pal Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) to quit a low-paying furniture sales job and dive into the risky yet rewarding world of stock brokering.
Together the pair rose quickly on Wall Street, living large in the 1990s boom with big pay cheques, crazy parties and all the illegal substances they could snort / smoke / imbibe. They even owned a yacht that sank off Sardinia.
But the oceanic mishap was a foreshadowing of the fate that would befall Belfort, as he sank into alcoholism and addiction and ended up serving 20 months in prison for financial corruption and fraud.
Scorsese will direct from Terence Winter’s script, itself adapted from Belfort’s memoir. Shooting is set to kick off this August in New York.
Hill still has plenty of comedy work to do, though, and will next be seen alongside Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn in Neighbourhood Watch, which as you may have read, has now changed to simply The Watch. It’ll be out on August 29.