the movierats.com

 IESB Reports:

“Leonardo DiCaprio’s company Appian Way just came on as a producer of the Ian Fleming biopic. The film based on an original screenplay written by Damian Stevenson about the life of the British author and journalist who created James Bond.

The LA Times had the news today in their Scriptland column, “In fall 2005, just before the lucrative Bond franchise rebooted with Daniel Craig, Stevenson made his first script sale to Warner Bros. He then spent months mollifying the WB legal department about the historical accuracy of the Fleming story and worked through dozens of drafts with Lazar.

“It’s the real James Bond,” says the 35-year-old Stevenson, who previously worked as a development executive at Kopelson Entertainment and DreamWorks. “In England, Ian Fleming’s exploits are much better well known. Talking to people out here, no one had any idea that M was based on a real person, Miss Moneypenny was based on a real person.”

Some script time line details are also included, “His latest version of the screenplay begins on the eve of Fleming’s Jamaica wedding in 1952, just before his first Bond novel, “Casino Royale,” was published (a wedding present to his new wife).

It then flashes back to Fleming’s years as a Reuters journalist stationed in Moscow and then a Commander of Naval Intelligence (MI6 code name “17F”) during World War II who devised innovative spying plots.”

So will DiCaprio take on the lead role and add Fleming to his list of historical figures he’s portrayed on screen?

The article says, “During the writers’ strike, DiCaprio showed interest in Fleming and his world, but he’s looking to take the script in a different direction with a new writer.”