Last year Leonardo DiCaprio attached himself to the lead role in The Deep Blue Good-by, which he seemed extremely keen on at the time, even hiring Dennis Lehane to overhaul the script.
But as so often with Leo, by March of this year he’d said goodbye to the project himself. Now they may have found a replacement, as Variety reports Christian Bale is in early talks play Travis McGee in the film.
No official offer has been made to Bale yet, but he’s agreed to come on board in principle, as long as the terms are correct.
The 1964 novel The Deep Blue Good-by is the first in John D. MacDonald’s long-running series of books that centre on the character of Travis McGee. He lives on a houseboat, called The Busted Flush, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he takes ‘salvage consultant’ jobs whenever he is running low on money, recovering lost items for clients for half of the profits.
In the novel, Travis meets the battered Lois and agress to try and track down her abusive boyfriend, which turns out to be a journey that becomes far more violent and complicated than he imagined.
Dennis Lehane wrote the most recent draft of the screenplay, which was previously worked on by Kario Salem and Dana Stevens. James Mangold is set to direct.