September 21, 2013 - 16:11 AMT
Quentin Tarantino to topline Oscar winner Roger Corman biopic

Quentin Tarantino has been cast as the lead in Roger Corman biopic The Man with the Kaleidoscope Eyes, it has been reported.

The Django Unchained filmmaker will play the B movie icon in the upcoming Joe Dante project, Digital Spy reveals citing The Daily Telegraph.

The Man with the Kaleidoscope Eyes chronicles the making of Corman's controversial drug drama The Trip, which was released in the 1960s with Jack Nicholson in the lead role.

"It's the story of how I made The Trip in the 1960s about LSD. It starred Jack Nicholson in one of his first roles and I took LSD so I knew what it was all about," said Corman of the project.

"It was very controversial but it was the only American picture invited to the Cannes Film Festival that year."

Colin Firth was originally linked with the role of Corman in The Man with the Kaleidoscope Eyes, which is yet to be assigned a release date.

Roger William Corman (born April 5, 1926)[1] is an Academy Award winning American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Much of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Admired by members of the French New Wave and Cahiers Du Cinema, Corman was the youngest filmmaker to have a retrospective at the Cinémathèque Française, as well as the British Film Institute and the Museum of Modern Art. In 2009, he was awarded an Honorary Academy Award.

Corman mentored and gave a start to many young film directors such as Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese and Peter Bogdanovich. He helped launch the career of actor Peter Fonda.

Corman has occasionally taken minor acting roles in the films of directors who started with him, including The Silence of the Lambs, The Godfather Part II, Apollo 13, The Manchurian Candidate (2004), and Philadelphia. A documentary about Corman's life and career entitled Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel premiered at Sundance and Cannes Film Festivals in 2011, directed by Alex Stapleton.