DiCaprio as Roosevelt?

Leo and Scorsese just can't seem to part ways.

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Monday, September 12th 2005 at 4:37 PM

I believe the relationship between Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio is pretty much rock solid. Variety is reporting today that Paramount Pictures is going to make due with that relationship as they have optioned the Pulitzer Prize-winning Edmund Morris book "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" and will develop it for Scorsese to direct and DiCaprio to star as the 26th U.S. president.

Nicholas Meyer is writing the script for the feature and Variety describes the story as the following:

Pic will chronicle the formative years of Roosevelt as he reinvented himself from a slight and privileged New York politician with a Harvard degree to the burly commander of the Rough Riders, a track that would lead him to the New York governorship, the vice presidency and the White House, when William McKinley was assassinated.

Meyer was quoted in the article saying, "From the first page of the book, … his life reads like a movie that requires a big bag of popcorn… We start at 25, as he begins to transform himself through sheer force of will from this asthmatic, nearsighted 125-pounder to this Sherman tank of a man so tough that he once got shot on the way to make a speech and completed his talk, bleeding with a bullet in his chest."

Other than this feature DiCaprio and Scorsese are currently working on what will be their third film together, The Departed.