There isn't a whole lot of news in this snippet from Terence Winter, screenwriter of The Wolf Of Wall Street, who spoke to our Joe Cunningham recently about Boardwalk Empire. But he does give us a tiny bit of news, which is that Martin Scorsese's new film starts shooting tomorrow.
"The Wolf of Wall Street, we’re actually very deep into prep on that and it starts shooting in New York on the 8th of August."
He continued, "It’s the true story of a guy named Jordan Belfort, based on his memoir. Jordan was an extremely successful stock broker in the mid-'90s, when he was in his early 20s, making upwards of $50 million a year. He had his own brokerage firm; he sort of skirted some of the security laws and ended up going to jail, had a rollercoaster ride of a life. He got into just about every drug on the planet, just unbelievable. It’s the comic, tragic, at times horrifying story of this rise and fall of a Wall Street whizz kid, and it’s just not like any other movie involving that subject matter and it’s going to be terrific.
"Leonardo DiCaprio stars in the film as Jordan. It was just an incredible book. I read it five or six years ago in less than 24 hours and I couldn’t put it down; the story is just unbelievable. It was a really fun script to write and I think it will be a terrific movie."
Is now the perfect time to make it, we asked him?
"Yes, there’s certainly a lot going on in the world. If you think the mid-'90s were corrupt, hold that up to what’s going on now or what’s been going on since then."
For more on **The Wolf Of Wall Street **as it approaches release, keep an eye on Empire - and look out for more from Winter in a future issue of the magazine.