DiCaprio to play Rasputin

PanARMENIAN.Net - Hot on the heels of playing the world's most charming man, Jay Gatsby, Leonardo DiCaprio is about to become a monk, UK Movies News reported.

Warner Bros. is developing a Rasputin movie for him at the actor’s studio-based Appian Way along with Kevin McCormick’s Langley Park Pictures.

The studio acquired a pitch from 'American Sniper' writer Jason Hall, who will script the story of the influential Russian mystic, Grigori Rasputin, who advised the ruling Russian Imperial family between 1907 and his death in 1916.

Rasputin was invited by Tsar Nicholas II to serve as a medical advisor to his haemophiliac son Alexei. Said to have manipulated the throne behind the scenes, Rasputin's exploits are the stuff of legend, rumoured to tie into mysticism and the dark arts.

According to the 'Deadline' website, DiCaprio was attracted by Hall’s approach to the figure, featuring “the complicated elements of a child who lost the better part of himself when his brother died, and was capable of kindness but also a ruthlessness".

Producers will be McCormick, Appian Way partner Jennifer Davisson Killoran and Peter Morgan.

DiCaprio will be seen next in Martin Scorsese’s 'The Wolf Of Wall Street,' starring as stockbroker Jordan Belfort. Paramount releasing the film on 15 November.