Steven Spielberg and Leonardo DiCaprio in talks to team up on Ulysses S Grant biopic

Leonardo DiCaprio and Steven Spielberg previously worked together in Catch Me If You Can.

Veteran filmmaker Steven Spielberg and Oscar-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who last worked together on 2002’s Catch Me If You Can, are in early talks to re-team for a Ulysses S Grant biopic. Lionsgate and DiCaprio’s Appian Way shingle last November acquired movie rights to Grant, the bestselling Ron Chernow biography that is being adapted by David James Kelly, reported Deadline.

Grant has been widely recognised as a superior military tactician for leading the Union Army to victory over the Confederacy during the Civil War under the supervision of President Abraham Lincoln, winning key battles at Shiloh and Vicksburg. He won two terms as President as a successor to Andrew Johnson and stabilised the economy along with attempting to remove the last vestiges of slavery, which included working to crush the Ku Klux Klan. David James Kelly is adapting the biography.

The feature will be produced by DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson. DiCaprio, 43, who will next film Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is attached to star in several projects in which he would play famous men in history, including a Leonardo da Vinci project for Paramount and a Teddy Roosevelt biopic that will reunite him with director Martin Scorsese.

Story continues below this ad

Spielberg’s last project was Ready Player One with Warner Bros. The film was based on the Ernest Cline novel of the same name. The film starred Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, Hannah John-Kamen, and Mark Rylance.

[bc_video video_id=”5786519133001″ account_id=”5757251836001″ player_id=”ByU0hpZif”]

Leonardo DiCaprio was last seen in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s 2015 film The Revenant, for which he won his maiden Academy Award.