The publishing deal only went through last week, and the book is not yet even written, but Leonardo DiCaprio has pounced on **American Wolf{
832F, nicknamed O-Six by fans for the year she was born, and touted by some as the most famous wild animal in the world, was part of a Yellowstone programme with researchers tracking her movements. The most studied wolf in the park, the alpha female led her own pack in the Lamar Valley and had been observed in unprecedented detail both by scientists and tourists. She was shot (legally) by a hunter in December 2010, causing an international outcry and calls for new regulations.
Nate Blakeslee is (or will be) the author of the book about the affair. A senior editor at Texas Monthly, he'd been following O-Six and the conservation movement around her. His angle will be on the success of that movement, and on the identity of the guilty hunter, who has never been named. Is he pitching the story as a murder mystery? That remains to be seen.
DiCaprio snapped up the rights in cahoots with Warner Bros.' Kevin McCormick (Gangster Squad), beating, among others, Robert Zemeckis in the auction.
Since there's no book yet, however, it'll be a while before we see this one. The publishing rights were bought for a seven figure sum by Crown in the US and Knopf in Canada, but there's no publication date so far.