Martin Scorsese is very close to starting production on his next feature, The Wolf of Wall Street, but that doesn't mean he's not paying close attention to the development of his future projects as well. While Scorsese has been developing a Frank Sinatra biopic for a while now, it would seem that he's finally getting serious about it, as the production has finally hired a writer to take care of the script. Billy Ray, Billy Ray, whose previous credits include films like Flightplan, Breach, State of Play and, most recently, The Hunger Games, has been brought on-board to script Sinatra.
Deadline says that Phil Alden Robinson was originally hired to work on the screenplay for the project, but never refers to Billy Ray's work as re-writing, so it's unknown what happened to Robinson's version. Scorsese has been attached to the project since 2009 when Peter Guber and Cathy Schulman secured the life rights to the singer (they are also serving as producers on the project alongside Scott Rudin, Tina Sinatra, and Scorsese's Sikelia banner). Sinatra is just one of the many projects that the Oscar-winning filmmaker has in development, which also explains why we haven't heard about it much as of late. In addition to The Wolf of Wall Street, Scorsese is also still working on The Irishman (an adaptation of Charles Brandt's "I Heard You Paint Houses") and Silence (based on the book by Shusaku Endo).
The Wolf of Wall Street, which starts shooting in New York this month, is set to star Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort, a stockbroker who hit in big in the 80s but finds trouble when he becomes involved in a large securities fraud case. It will be the fifth time that the director has worked with the star. The supporting cast of the film is impressive and features the likes of Jonah Hill, Matthew McConaughey, Jon Favreau, Jean Dujardin, Jon Bernthal, Ethan Suplee, Kyle Chandler and Rob Reiner.
