DiCaprio and Mann Finally Team for Film Noir Drama

Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael Mann had wanted to work together on several projects, including The Aviator, a James Dean project and The Inside Man, reports Michael Fleming, but they are finally going to do an untitled film noir drama (written by The Aviator's John Logan), which is being shopped by CAA to several studios. Another project they were hoping to do was an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's classic Spanish Civil War novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, which was simply too arty and expensive for Warner Bros. That's still a movie I want to see--maybe Warner Indie can set it up.

Update: Time has named DiCaprio one of this year's 100 movers and shakers: his The Departed director Martin Scorsese writes him up.

And Peter Jackson is also shopping his Lovely Bones script. $65 million seems like a hefty budget for what Jackson himself was envisioning as a small-scale drama. Although at this point, that must seem modest to him...

[NYT photo by Richard Burbridge]