Leo DiCaprio must be a real Dennis Lehane fan, as it was Leo who got Martin Scorsese to take on Shutter Island (with him in the starring role, of course) and now he’s got Warner Bros. to pick up the film rights to Lehane’s upcoming novel, Live By Night. DiCaprio plans to both star in the film version and produce it through his Appian Way production company.
The book takes characters from the author’s novel, The Given Day, and follows them into the Prohibition Era (The Given Day was set in the late 1910s and early 1920s). The Given Day had been set up at Columbia Pictures back in 2008, for Sam Raimi to direct. However, the option expired on the project and was acquired by Warner Bros., which now controls all rights to this novel trilogy. Live By Night will be published later this fall and it appears at the moment DiCaprio is more interested in getting this new book on the screen than starting off with The Given Day.
The film will now go onto Leo’s ever growing pile of possible projects, and we’ll have to wait and see when it’ll get made. (Source: Variety)