Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros has acquired the upcoming Michael Armour novel The Road Home, and Crazy Heart helmer Scott Cooper has signed on the write the script, direct and produce with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson Killoran’s Warner Bros-based Appian Way. The drama will be shaped as a potential star vehicle for DiCaprio.

DiCaprio and Davisson Killoran jump right back into the frying pan with Cooper after he directed Out Of The Furnace, the revenge thriller that originally sold as a Brad Ingelsby spec that DiCaprio intended to star in for Ridley Scott. The film was rewritten by Cooper and got made by Relativity Media with Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson and Zoe Saldana starring, a co-production between Appian Way and Scott Free.

The Road Home is a Depression-era drama that focuses on Creek, a war-scarred rancher on the Central California coast who finds himself entangled in scandal when he is asked to investigate the brutal murder of a local man, a case that local police have swept under the rug.

Armour, by the way, was repped in the deal by Jeff Berg’s Resolution, the first deal for the new agency we have notched at Deadline.

Appian Way just wrapped The Wolf Of Wall Street, the Terence Winter-scripted adaptation of Jordan Belfort’s memoir of being an out-of-control Wall Street trader. Martin Scorsese directed and DiCaprio plays the title character, with Appian Way producing with Sikelia Productions and Red Granite Pictures, latter of which financed. Appian Way teamed with Double Feature Films to produce the recently wrapped Brad Furman-directed Runner Runner for New Regency, with Justin Timberlake and Ben Affleck starring. Affleck is separately adapting the Dennis Lehane novel Live By Night as a starring and directing vehicle that Appian Way is producing.

CAA and attorney Darren Trattner made Cooper’s deal and DiCaprio and Appian Way are repped by Rick Yorn.