Martin Scorsese has a new project in the works with Leonardo DiCaprio. That’s not a surprise, given how frequently the two have worked together over the past two decades, but what is a surprise is the other big name attached to the project: Dwayne Johnson. Deadline reports that Scorsese, DiCaprio, Johnson, and Emily Blunt are all working on a Hawaiian crime epic.
The film will reportedly cover the war for the Aloha State’s criminal underworld in the 1960s and 70s, as a homegrown crime boss battled rival crime syndicates and multinational corporations for control over the then-new state. Deadline reports that Blunt and Johnson, who starred in Jungle Cruise together and will headline the buzzy MMA biopic The Smashing Machine later this year, brought the idea to frequent collaborators Scorsese and DiCaprio. The film has been handed off to writer Nick Bilton, a special correspondent for Vanity Fair who has penned non-fiction books on the rise of Twitter and the hunt for Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht. Working with Scorsese would certainly be a turn for Johnson, whose recent fare has tended towards the Fast and/or Furious, but the wrestler-turned-actor has apparently long wanted to make a movie in Hawaii.
How Many Movies Has Martin Scorsese Made With Leonardo DiCaprio?
Scorsese‘s first collaboration with DiCaprio came in 2002’s Gangs of New York. A decades-in-the-making dream project for Scorsese, the film was ultimately criticized for its unwieldy length and some questionable casting choices, but it served as the first act of a director-actor duo that has resulted in six (and counting) films. Scorsese cast DiCaprio as the lead in his next three films: as troubled tycoon Howard Hughes in The Aviator, an undercover cop in The Departed, and an investigator at a remote psychiatric hospital in Shutter Island. Scorsese subsequently had one of his biggest box office hits with The Wolf of Wall Street, which starred DiCaprio as vulgar stock-scammer Jordan Belfort. After a decade-long hiatus (during which time both Scorsese and DiCaprio were attached to an adaptation of Erik Larson‘s The Devil in the White City, which remains in development hell), the two reunited for 2023’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which starred DiCaprio as Ernest Burkhart, a key figure in the Osage murders.
The as-yet untitled Hawaiian crime film does not yet have a production company or a studio attached. Producers on the project include Scorsese, Johnson, Blunt, DiCaprio, Bilton, Johnson‘s ex-wife and producing partner Dany Garcia, and frequent Scorsese collaborators Lisa Frechette and Rick Yorn.
Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Dwayne Johnson, and Emily Blunt‘s Hawaiian crime film is in development; no title or release date have yet been announced.
via Collider