Steven Spielberg, Leonardo DiCaprio eye presidential biopic

Leonardo DiCaprio. Image: AFP/pool/Christophe Archambault via AFP Relaxnews

Leonardo DiCaprio looks likely to play Ulysses S. Grant in a film about the 18th President of the United States.

He was a superb military strategist, the second Republican President of the U.S., and instrumental in leading a charge against the Ku Klux Klan.

Now Steven Spielberg and Leonardo DiCaprio are moving ahead with a plan to make a film about President Grant’s life, according to The Wrap and Deadline.

The project would be based on Ron Chernow’s biography and produced through DiCaprio’s Appian Way company for Lionsgate.

Should the deal come good, it’ll mark the first time that DiCaprio and Spielberg have made a film together since the two-time Oscar nominated, $352 million-grossing “Catch Me If You Can”.

Spielberg already has “Lincoln” under his belt, the 2012 film in which Daniel Day-Lewis played the first Republican president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, who was a key figure in the ending of legal slavery.

That took two Oscars from a total of 12 nominations, and a worldwide gross of $275 million against its $60 million budget.

Having helmed 2018’s futuristic “Ready Player One”, Spielberg has “West Side Story”, “The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara” and another “Indiana Jones” movie in various stages of production, and a reel of other potential projects in the works.

DiCaprio, who finally won an Academy Award for his performance in 2015 film “The Revenant”, is involved with “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (Tarantino, 2019), “The Black Hand”, “Killers of the Flower Moon” (Scorsese), and another presidential biopic, Martin Scorsese’s “Roosevelt”. JB

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