As we mentioned in a Where Have They Been? feature we ran a few months ago, dramatist Todd Field has been missing from the world of cinema since 2006’s sardonic suburban drama, “Little Children.”
Consequentially, the three-time Academy Award-nominated director/writer (and actor) has been sorely missed; adaptations of Cormac McCarthy‘s “Blood Meridian” could never gain much traction even under the aegis of “The Social Network” producer Scott Rudin.
This could all change thanks to one of the most commercially viable actors on the planet who is said to be circling the project.
According to the LA Times, Leonardo DiCaprio has suddenty sprouted interest in “The Creed of Violence,” a Western-ish project is based off Boston Teran‘s novel and takes place in Mexico 1910, during the Mexican Revolution and focuses on the American intervention in the war.
Whether Field remains attached to this project three years on is unclear, and calls to Universal spokespeople — where the project currently lays its head — have not been returned. However, a reader recently pointed us in the direction of the Lee Filters camera company Tumblr page that featured a page of photographs recently taken by Field during location scouting in Durango and Veracruz, Mexico. So it certainly seems that Field is deep into development.
Like Will Smith, DiCaprio is one of those rare breed of A-list actors who can convince almost any studio (save possibly Warner Bros.) to green light any relatively dormant project such as this one. Having him behind this project is certainly exciting.
However, this is isn’t all Todd Field has on his plate. He already has a second project set up over at Universal, the heist-gone-wrong picture “Hubris,” which focuses on a group of unfortunate would-be criminals that decide to rob the wrong mobster (Michael Mann is developing “Big Tuna,” a separate and different project that follows the same gangster). DiCaprio’s next big gig is Quentin Tarantino‘s “Django Unchained,” where he’ll play a malevolent and racist plantation owner opposite Jamie Foxx and Samuel L. Jackson.