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One of the biggest pieces of entertainment news of the year dropped this week, and we aren’t talking about Amazon gaining creative control of the James Bond franchise: according to reports, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is set to star in a crime film directed by the legendary Martin Scorsese.
According to reports out of Hollywood, The Rock, Leonardo DiCaprio and Emily Blunt are attached to star in a film directed by Martin Scorsese that will focus on gangsters in Hawaii. While the film does not have a studio home yet, multiple bids are reportedly being prepared/are already tabled.
Landing a Martin Scorsese project is a massive turn of events for The Rock, who has been criticized in recent years for the extremely commercial nature of his work, following disappointing big budget films such as Jungle Cruise, Red Notice, Black Adams, Fast X, and Red One.
Deadline has described the project as such: “Imagine Robert De Niro’s Jimmy Conway character from Goodfellas, but as a ruthless Hawaiian crime boss, based on a real figure, who battled encroaching rivals for control of organized crime in Hawaii.”
“The film focuses on a turbulent time on the island paradise when an aspiring mob boss battled rival crime factions to wrest control of the underworld of the Hawaiian islands. In 1960s and 70s Hawaii, this formidable and charismatic mob boss rises to build the islands’ most powerful criminal empire, waging a brutal war against mainland corporations and rival syndicates while fighting to preserve his ancestral land. It’s based on the untold true story of a man who fought to preserve his homeland through a ruthless quest for absolute power — igniting the last great American mob saga, where the war for cultural survival takes place in the unlikeliest of places: paradise.”
Clearly aware of the direction his career was headed, The Rock has made a conscious effort to make a pivot in his work, as his next film will be the Benny Safdie-directed sports biopic drama The Smashing Machine, which is set up at A24 and details the life of Mark Kerr. Blunt is also starring in that film.
As for Scorsese, earlier this year it was reported that he and DiCaprio were reviving their Devil in the White City adaptation, which has been in production hell for a decade.
Set at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 Chicago, The Devil in the White City, published by writer Erik Larson in 2004, ells the simultaneous stories of architect Daniel Burnham, tasked with designing “The White City” for the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, and serial killer H.H. Holmes, whose widely considered to be the first serial killer in the history of the United States.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s next movie will be the Paul Thomas Anderson-directed film One Battle After Another, set to release later this year.