Mann To Team Up With DiCaprio

A lot of people make lists. To Do lists, shopping lists, lists of fellow assassins you want to kill after they gatecrash your wedding, kill your groom, and leave you for dead. Little things like that. It's a fair bet then that, lying somewhere around Michael Mann's office, is a list entitled: Major Hollywood Stars I Want To Work With. Cruise has already been crossed off. So has Crowe. And Smith. Pacino. De Niro. And the Transporter himself, Jason Statham. And now the genius director of Collateral and Heat can draw a big red marker through Li'l Leo DiCaprio's name. For Mann and DiCaprio have teamed up to collaborate on a new movie called Public Enemies, which purports to tell the true story of how cross-dressing nutjob J. Edgar Hoover oversaw the FBI's pursuit of three major criminal figures - John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd - in the 1930s. In apprehending (i.e. killing) the crooks, he transformed the Feds from a powerless institution into the power-crazed, erm, all-powerful and glorious institution it is today. There's no word yet on whether this will in fact be Mann's next project. Like Ridley Scott, Will Ferrell and Del Boy, he's a man who likes to have about a dozen projects ready to go at any time. Public Enemies could be it; or it could be his Enzo Ferrari biopic; or his long-in-gestation Gates Of Fire. Similarly, Li'l Leo - the biopic hound who's just finished The Aviator for Martin Scorsese and is about to start The Good Shepherd for director Robert De Niro - hasn't confirmed which part he'll play. But he doesn't seem quite right for Hoover. Pretty Boy Floyd sounds spot-on. Whatever happens, any Mann film is something to get excited about. Right now, there's no-one better at the crime flick, and with the switch in focus to the 1930s period, he's dipping his toe into new territory. With the 1930s setting, you might think that this will have a distinct Untouchables vibe, but we're not so sure. One law-abiding man pitted against three major Big Bads? It can only be next year's Van Helsing... but hopefully without the dodgy CGI, endless swinging and all-pervading sense of enormous crapness. But in Mann and Li'l Leo we trust.