Paramount Pictures is in final negotiations to pre-emptively acquire Robert Ludlum's political thriller.

Michael Seitzman will write the adaptation, which will be produced by Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher's Red Wagon Entertainment, DiCaprio's Appian Way and the Ludlum estate.

The novel was published in 1977, though the big-screen version will be updated. DiCaprio will play novelist Peter Chancellor, who is writing a thriller about Washington power brokers being blackmailed with information gathered by intelligence agencies in order to alter U.S. policy. When Chancellor's work of fiction turns out to have stumbled into reality, he ends up on a run for his life, becoming like a character from his own novel.

"Michael Seitzman's reinvention of this story captures all the twists and paranoia that was part of the Ludlum genius but also takes on the contemporary relevance of the material," Paramount Pictures president Gail Berman said.

Seitzman, who penned the untitled Niki Caro project starring Charlize Theron, had been in love with the book since reading it when he was 10. He pitched his updated take to the studio, which then pre-emptively started to buy the rights.

"We live in this crazy post-Patriot Act environment where Benjamin Franklin's warning that those that give up essential liberties for temporary security don't deserve either one are being ignored, so the subject matter seemed ripe," Seitzman said in an interview.

Of DiCaprio, he added: "This is not pap, but there really is no one better for this than Leo. The author is supposed to be an author, not an action hero. You're supposed to buy him as a gifted intellectual. Chancellor has only imagined the world outside his four walls, but now, not only does he have to be a participant in it, he has to save it."

Red Wagon president Bobby Cohen will oversee the project along with Brad Simpson of Appian Way for their respective companies. Jeffrey Weiner and Henry Morrison will supervise for the Ludlum estate, while Paramount co-president, production Alli Shearmur will shepherd the project for the studio.

Ludlum's work has been enjoying a renaissance in Hollywood since "The Bourne Identity" became a hit for Universal in 2002. Universal made a sequel, "The Bourne Supremacy," in 2004 and also is developing "The Sigma Protocol."

Michael Mann, who has long wanted to direct Leonardo, will collaborate with Leo on an adaptation of Bryan Burrough's bestselling novel Public Enemies, which Mann will direct and produce and DiCaprio will star in and produce. Mann will produce through his Forward Pass and DiCaprio through his Appian Way, with Kevin Misher also producing through his Misher Films. Tribeca Films partners Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro executive produce. This project was anounced in August 2004. The story, set during the Great Depression, centers on the great crime spree of notorious gangsters John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd during 1933-34. J. Edgar Hoover's battle to bring down these mobsters helped transform the FBI from a powerless agency into the federal police force that it is today.

Leonardo's production company, Appian Way, has teamed with Columbia Pictures to produce the biopic about Timothy Treadwell, an environmentalist who was fatally mauled by the bears he wanted to protect. DiCaprio, who supported Treadwell's charities, will take on the role of Treadwell, who was a man Leo has long admired for his insistence on viewing wild animals as natural friends rather than potential predators. Co-execs on the project are Matt Tolmach and Shannon Gaulding. DiCaprio and Simpson will produce, with Zeman and Barnz as executive producers. Jewel Palovak, co-founder of Treadwell's educational foundation, Grizzly People, will also serve in a producing capacity.

Lasse Hallstrom has come onboard to direct the A-bomb thriller, "Bombshell," for Universal Pictures as a potential starring vehicle for Leonardo DiCaprio.

"Bombshell," which could reteam Hallstrom and DiCaprio for the first time since 1993's "What's Eating Gilbert Grape," will compete with several pics on Hallstrom and DiCaprio's schedules.

DiCaprio will produce "Bombshell" through his shingle, Appian Way. Also producing are Hallstrom's producing partner, Leslie Holleran, former Industry manager Julia Chasman and Mary Saltman.

Industry Entertainment's Nick Weschler and DiCaprio's father, George DiCaprio, will exec produce.

Pic is an adaptation of "Bombshell: The Secret Story of America's Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy," by former Moscow-based journalists Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel

"The Mighty" scribe Charles Leavitt first adapted the thriller, which was published by Times Books in 1997. James Vanderbilt, one of the writers of the untitled Peter Berg pic that Misher Films and Strike Entertainment are producing for U, has since done a rewrite.

The book is a sympathetic portrait of Theodore Hall, a physics prodigy recruited for the Manhattan Project while still a teenager. Although the youngest participant in the development of the atomic bomb, Hall feared an American monopoly on nuclear secrets and passed classified data to the Soviet Union. He was never prosecuted, though historians claim he may have started the Cold War.

U prexy of production Mary Parent is developing the project with VP Tim O'Hair.
(From Variety November 25 2002)