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Warner Bros Acquires Post-WWII Don Winslow Novel ‘Satori’ For Leonardo DiCaprio

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Monday October 3, 2011 @ 12:32pm PDTTags: Aaron Johnson, Baz Luhrmann, Benicio Del Toro, Blake Lively, Clint Eastwood, Don Winslow, Jennifer Killoran, John Travolta, Leonardo DiCaprio, Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino, Rick Yorn, Shane Salerno, Taylor Kitsch
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros has acquired the Don Winslow bestselling novel Satori and will develop it as a star vehicle for Leonardo DiCaprio to play a Westerner, raised in Japan and taught an assassin’s skills, who gets caught up in the chaos of post-WWII as the U.S., Soviet Union, France and China maneuver for power in Southeast Asia in the early 1950s. Shane Salerno will write the script with Winslow, and John Lesher’s Grisdi Productions and DiCaprio’s Appian Way partner Jennifer Killoran are producing. Salerno is executive producer.

DiCaprio will play Nicholai Hel, raised in Japan by a martial arts expert and genius at Go, the complex chess-like Japanese game. The master, a Japanese general, passes on all his secrets and the student repays him by murdering his mentor as an act of devotion; the military leader would have been disgraced and killed as a war criminal.

Leonardo DiCaprioFor that act, Hel is thrown in solitary confinement in a Tokyo prison and tortured for three years. He is finally sprung by the CIA after agreeing to assassinate the Soviet commissioner to China. Hel is trained for the task by a beautiful French woman he falls in love with. Though he now sees a happy ending to the dangerous assignment, Hel is betrayed by his backers and, using his Go skills for strategy, makes his way through Vietnam hunted by American, Chinese, Russian and French intelligence agencies as well as a Corsican mob and Vietnamese criminal syndicate. It’s a sophisticated thriller, and the studio sees potential for its own Jason Bourne-type action franchise. READ MORE »

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Cannes: Red Granite Acquires Leonardo DiCaprio Pic ‘The Wolf Of Wall Street’

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Wednesday May 11, 2011 @ 12:53am PDTTags: Alexandra Milchan, Cannes, Christian Mercuri, Danny Dimbort, Jennifer Killoran, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Scorsese, Rick Yorn, Ridley Scott, Terence Winter, The Wolf of Wall Street
Mike Fleming

Red Granite Pictures, which just formed an international sales division to be headed by ex-Nu Image execs Danny Dimbort and Christian Mercuri, has just bought into a big project. Red Granite chairman/CEO Riza Aziz and vice chairman Joey McFarland have … Read More »

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Benicio Del Toro In ‘Savages’ Talks

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Tuesday March 22, 2011 @ 4:26pm PDTTags: Aaron Johnson, Benicio Del Toro, Don Winslow, Gary Ross, Jennifer Lawrence, Oliver Stone, Rick Yorn, Salma Hayek, Savages, Shane Salerno, Taylor Kitsch
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Benicio Del Toro is signing on to play a deadly drug cartel enforcer in Savages, joining Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch in the drama that Oliver Stone is directing, based on the Don Winslow bestseller. The project is moving … Read More »

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Warner Bros Stakes Out ‘Harker,’ Dracula Project With Appian Way And ‘Unknown’ Director Jaume Collet-Serra

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Monday February 7, 2011 @ 3:26pm PSTTags: Jennifer Davisson Killoran, Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael Connelly, Movie Deals, Movies, Paradigm, Rick Yorn, Warner Bros
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros is closing a deal to acquire Harker, a spec script by Lee Shipman & Brian McGreevy for a re-imagining of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that will be directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. The filmmaker’s latest is the Liam Neeson-starrer … Read More »

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