EXCLUSIVE: Appian Approach Productions, the manufacturing firm of Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson, has teamed with producers Alex Cutler and Darryl Marshak to develop a Common Footage biopic of Bela Lugosi, the Hungarian star of stage and display screen who originated the enduring position of Dracula each on Broadway and within the traditional 1931 Common horror movie, a number of sources inform Deadline.
Reps for Common declined remark. Whereas insiders harassed that it’s very early days on this undertaking, the backstory is fascinating, because it got here into Common as a pitch round two years in the past, and has been quietly gestating ever since. Script is by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, the writers of Tim Burton’s Ed Wooden, which received Martin Landau an Oscar and different prime honors for his portrayal of Lugosi on the finish of his life.
In contrast to that 1994 traditional, the brand new movie will deal with a youthful Lugosi, capturing his meteoric rise to change into one in every of cinema’s most enduring and recognizable figures. The movie chronicles his immigration from Hungary and rise to stardom, each because the star of Dracula on Broadway and the Hollywood adaptation, in addition to his precipitous fall after declining the position of Frankenstein, which went to his future rival Boris Karloff.
Whereas Lugosi may by no means escape the position of Dracula, it cemented his place in historical past, because the cornerstone of the pantheon of legendary monsters from Common, which remains to be celebrated immediately. With Halloween quick approaching, there may be no higher time to revisit the works that made Lugosi a star.
Jennifer Davisson, Michael Hampton and Leonardo DiCaprio will produce the brand new Lugosi undertaking for Appian Approach.
A pair of the city’s most celebrated screenwriters, who’re extensively recognized for his or her ‘anti-biopic’ narratives, Alexander and Karaszewski have written a few of Hollywood’s most indelible award-winning roles for actors, with initiatives like The Folks vs. Larry Flynt, Man on the Moon, Huge Eyes, Dolemite is My Identify and American Crime Story, for which they earned a number of Emmys and PGA Awards, in addition to a WGA Award. Most lately, they penned the script for a biopic about The Grateful Lifeless, which is about up at Apple.
Business veterans Cutler and Marshak are a pair of first cousins who’ve been working in the direction of a Lugosi movie for a few years, starting once they have been teenagers. Marshak, who went on to change into a expertise agent, labored with DiCaprio early in every of their careers.
Most lately, Appian Approach has produced Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-nominated Apple pic Killers of the Flower, starring DiCaprio, in addition to titles like The Featherweight and Queen of Bones. As an actor, DiCaprio can presently be seen starring in One Battle One other, the critically acclaimed movie from Paul Thomas Anderson, which has grossed over $138 million worldwide. Stated to be circling Michael Mann’s Warmth 2, which has simply moved from Warner Bros. to Amazon MGM’s United Artists, he’s additionally lately entered talks to star reverse Jennifer Lawrence in What Occurs at Night time, a brand new Scorsese Apple pic, primarily based on the novel from Peter Cameron.
Alexander and Karaszewski are represented by CAA and Leisure 360. Appian Approach is repped by LBI and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller. Cutler & Marshak are repped by Michael Sherman at Eisner Legislation.