Martin Scorsese developing a Frank Sinatra biopic with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence
Martin Scorsese is ol’ blue-eyeing a big new project.
Variety reports that Scorsese is developing a Frank Sinatra biopic that will star Leonardo DiCaprio as the legendary crooner and Jennifer Lawrence as movie star Ava Gardner, Sinatra’s second wife. It would be the Oscar-winning director’s seventh film with DiCaprio and a reunion for DiCaprio and Lawrence, who worked together on the Best Picture-nominated dark comedy “Don’t Look Up.”
The 81-year-old filmmaker plans to tackle the Sinatra biopic after “Life of Jesus,” his independently financed religious film that is expected to go into production this year. (Variety notes that “Silence” star Andrew Garfield and “Top Gun: Maverick” actor Miles Teller are up for potential roles in that project.)
The Sinatra film is not set – Frank’s daughter Tina Sinatra controls his estate and has not given her blessing to the project – but studios are already interested, with Sony said to be the frontrunner to land the package. No screenwriter is attached at this point. It would be the first large-scale biopic of one of the 20th century’s most important entertainers.
After the relative financial underperformance of Scorsese’s most-recent film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” a Sinatra biopic would be a likely hit, as biopics about musical superstars are reliable box office performers – “Bob Marley: One Love” is currently the year’s fifth-highest-grossing film and top-performing non-franchise film – and often get a lot of awards buzz as well. If it ends up happening, it would likely be Scorsese’s biggest movie since “The Wolf of Wall Street” grossed over $400 million after it opened in late 2013.
Scorsese has been trying to make a Rat Pack movie in one form or another for decades. In 1997, he developed a biopic about Sinatra’s pal Dean Martin that would have starred Tom Hanks as Martin and John Travolta as Sinatra, but it didn’t get off the ground. And Scorsese was first reported as working on a Sinatra-centric movie in 2009 with screenwriter Phil Alden Robinson and the rights to Sinatra’s music, but it didn’t work out at the time. We’ll see if it does now, when DiCaprio and Lawrence are attached.
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