What’s a post-Oscar role looking like for Adrien Brody? How about a part in one of the hottest projects in town? Damien Chazelle’s “Evel Knievel on Tour” (via Deadline).
Chazelle’s film is already supposed to have Leonardo DiCaprio star in the lead role, although a contract hasn’t been sealed just yet. Brody being added to the mix would depend on whether DiCaprio closes his deal. A shoot during the summer is being eyed on the film.
Sources are saying that DiCaprio reaching a deal to star in the film seems to be an inevitability, and could in fact occur in the coming days. This film is, in all likelihood, a go over at Paramount.
Brody is said to have met with Chazelle for the part of sports promoter Shelly Saltman. Knievel ruined his career when he attacked Saltman with an aluminum baseball bat due to an unflattering book he wrote about him. Saltman was knocked unconscious and needed major surgery to repair his arm. Knievel served 6 months in jail, but lost all his endorsements and contracts.
The report goes on to add that the project is something DiCaprio and Chazelle have been talking about for some time. It all started when Chazelle approached DiCaprio to star in his prison drama at Paramount. That discussion led to DiCaprio suggesting ‘Evel Knievel’ which he had “been trying to get off the ground for some time.”
William Monahan (“The Departed”) wrote the original draft, but the latest version had a draft by Terence Winter (“The Wolf of Wall Street,” “The Sopranos”). Chazelle additionally revised the script under DiCaprio’s supervision.
A few months back, I had been told that this would not be a straightforward rise and fall biopic. Instead, the story is set in a single year, 1974, and tackles Knievel’s ambitious planning to jump across Idaho’s Snake River on his motorcycle.
Knievel was an American stunt performer and entertainer, known for his motorcycle jumps (and bad temper). During his stunt career, Knievel suffered more than 433 bone fractures, earning an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records as the survivor of "most bones broken in a lifetime.”