According to The Hollywood Reporter, Oscar-winning French actor Jean Dujardin (The Artist) has boarded Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo Dicaprio as The Wolf himself.
Dujardin is set to play Jean-Jacques Handali, a Swiss banker involved in laundering illicit funds for Jordan Belfort’s firm. Kyle Chandler (Super 8, Friday Night Lights) is playing the FBI Agent who built the case against Belfort, and Jonah Hill is set to star as his partner.
This is number five for the Dicaprio/Scorsese team-up. Three more films and they tie the De Niro legacy. Such a legacy, it possesses it’s very own, Wiki Page.
The Wolf of Wall Street is based on the said memoirs, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Catching The Wolf of Wall Street, written by Jordan Belfort, Dicaprio’s character. It chronicles his life as a broker on the eponymous street of stock and trade, as he rose to grace and then fell very far from it with his own firm, Stratton Oakmont, based out of Long Island, New York. The billions in stock revenue gave him things, many things, like, oh let’s say a 37m yacht previously built for Coca Chanel herself which he then extended to 50m. Said boat came equipped with: a damn helicopter, 8 jet skis, about 5 bartenders, and GLASS FLOOR in his stateroom (how’s that for bumpin’ drug off of?)
But the boat (which he eventually sank), excessive partying, women, drugs and, oh yes, the 1998 indictment of Securities Fraud and Money Laundering in excess of $200 million smackeroos, eventually played into his downfall. 2000′s Boiler Room (Vin Diesel, Giovanni Ribisi) was reputedly based off his firm as well.
This looks to be gearing up as a good old fashioned Scorsese “Along the timeline, through the years” version of storytelling, not unlike his Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed? Yezir.
Principle photography is set to lens this August in New York. Currently there is no set release date, but the safe bet would be to say 4th quarter next year, late Oscar season.
