Leonardo DiCaprio, an undisputed genius whose many talents include acting, environmentalism, wrestling bears and looking good on the front of boats, has signed on to play Leonardo da Vinci, whose accomplishments as a painter, sculptor, architect, scientist, engineer, astronomer and mathematician are also fairly impressive in their own way.
Trade publication Deadline report that Paramount have won the rights to Walter Isaacson‘s upcoming biography of da Vinci, with DiCaprio set to star in the film, as well as produce it under the auspices of his Appian Way Productions company.
DiCaprio’s mum has famously said that she named him after the great artist because she visited the Uffizi Gallery in Florence while pregnant with him, and felt him kick for the first time while she viewed one of da Vinci’s works.
Isaacson has previously penned books on Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, and according to information from the publisher about his upcoming volume:
Isaacson used Da Vinci’s notebooks to weave a narrative that connects his art to his science and voracious curiosity and imagination. Aside from his priceless paintings, he pursued innovative studies of anatomy (his iconic drawing of Vitruvian Man), fossils, birds, the heart, flying machines, botany, geology and weaponry. He peeled flesh off the faces of cadavers, drew the muscles that move the lips and then painted history’s most memorable smile.
He explored the math of optics, showed how light rays strike the cornea and produced illusions of changing perspectives in The Last Supper. Isaacson also describes how Leonardo’s lifelong enthusiasm for staging theatrical productions informed his paintings and inventions. According to the book, he also was a bit of a misfit: illegitimate, gay, vegetarian, left-handed, easily distracted and at times heretical.
According to his IMDB, Leonardo DiCaprio is also set to star in the upcoming thriller The Black Hand, about a police officer seeking “justice against a ruthless Italian-American gang in New York.”
