'The Wolf Of Wall Street' Takes Priority For Martin Scorsese And Leonardo DiCaprio, Shoots In August

At this point it probably unsafe to declare that any one project will be Martin Scorsese's next before cameras start to roll, but it looks like his next movie is really and truly decided. (Seriously.) Financing has come together for Scorsese to make The Wolf of Wall Street, which will star Leonardo DiCaprio, making the film the pair's fifth collaboration.

So it looks like, once again, Scorsese's long-planned adaptation of the novel Silence will have to wait, as will his adaptation of the Jo Nesbo book The Snowman.

Deadline says that the film, based on Jordan Belfourt's memoir about his days as a seriously party-hungry stockbroker, and his federal jail time for money laundering and securities fraud, has finally come together thanks to the new company Red Granite Pictures, which picked up rights to make the film last May. As we reported last year, the film is being set up to shoot as an indie.Terence Winter's script is still in play, though he will polish it before the film shoots in August. Deadline says Scorsese and DiCaprio felt the time was right to make the movie now, and no wonder. With massive reaction to yesterday's Goldman Sachs op-ed in the New York Times and continued conversation about the economy thanks to the upcoming US Presidential election, it is evident that the behavior of Wall Street is a big topic of interest. A film like this could find an audience very easily.

Here's the book synopsis:

Belfort, who founded one of the first and largest chop shop brokerage firms in 1987, was banned from the securities business for life by 1994, and later went to jail for fraud and money-laundering, delivers a memoir that reads like fiction. It covers his decade of success with straightforward accounts of how he worked with managers of obscure companies to acquire large amounts of stock with minimal public disclosure, then pumped up the price and sold it, so he and the insiders made large profits while public investors usually lost. Profits were laundered through purchase of legitimate businesses and cash deposits in Swiss banks. There is only brief mention of Belfort's life before Wall Street or events since 1997. The book's main topic is the vast amount of sex, drugs and risky physical behavior Belfort managed to survive. As might be expected in the autobiography of a veteran con man with movie rights already sold, it's hard to know how much to believe.