Woodrow Wilson Biopic Developing For Leonardo DiCaprio

Despite less than stellar reviews, Leonardo DiCaprio led Baz Luhrmann’s gaudy 3D adaptation of “The Great Gatsby” to nearly $350 million worldwide. Warner Bros. understandably wants to stay in the DiCaprio business and what better way to do that than to develop a biopic of a wartime American president for the star?

The studio, Deadline reported yesterday, has acquired the A. Scott Berg-written biography of Woodrow Wilson, titled “Wilson,” as a project for DiCaprio. Written over thirteen years, the non-fiction book presents the former President as “academic-turned-politician” who “at first resisted and then rose to the occasion and led the U.S. into the [First World] War, claiming it would make the world safe for democracy.” Here’s the Amazon synopsis:

One hundred years after his inauguration, Woodrow Wilson still stands as one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century, and one of the most enigmatic. And now, after more than a decade of research and writing, Pulitzer Prize-winning author A. Scott Berg has completed Wilson—the most personal and penetrating biography ever written about the 28th President.

In addition to the hundreds of thousands of documents in the Wilson Archives, Berg was the first biographer to gain access to two recently-discovered caches of papers belonging to those close to Wilson. From this material, Berg was able to add countless details—even several unknown events—that fill in missing pieces of Wilson’s character and cast new light on his entire life.

From the scholar-President who ushered the country through its first great world war to the man of intense passion and turbulence , from the idealist determined to make the world “safe for democracy” to the stroke-crippled leader whose incapacity and the subterfuges around it were among the century’s greatest secrets, the result is an intimate portrait written with a particularly contemporary point of view – a book at once magisterial and deeply emotional about the whole of Wilson’s life, accomplishments, and failings. This is not just Wilson the icon—but Wilson the man.

DiCaprio’s own Appian Way will produce the project and he, of course, will star in the film. His interest in the project came from the similarities from the international political climate of WWI and the current crises in countries like Syria. The project’s still a long way off—the rights were only picked up yesterday, after all—and DiCaprio has other projects lined up with WB, his reunion with Jamie Foxx in “Mean Business On North Ganson Street” and the Viking epic “King Harald.” In the meantime, we can all look forward to seeing DiCaprio slime it up in “The Wolf of Wall Street” when it opens November 15th. Check out a couple new pics below.