Leonardo DiCaprio in Talks to Play Cult-Leader Jim Jones
Leonardo DiCaprio is in final talks to star in and produce Jim Jones, based on the infamous religious cult leader who was behind a mass murder-suicide in 1978. Scott Rosenberg, known for writing Venom, High Fidelity, and Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle, wrote the script.
Per Deadline, Jim Jones tracks the true story of Jim Jones, the founder of the Peoples Temple in Indianapolis in 1955, a religious cult that promoted Christian Socialism. By the 1970s, he openly rejected traditional Christianity and claimed he was God. He constructed “Jonestown” in Guyana in 1974 and spurred a following to live with him there as he attempted to sell the idea of a socialist paradise free from U.S. government oppression.
Amid rumors of human rights abuses, the American government sent a delegation led by U.S. Representative Leo Ryan in November 1978. Ryan, along with four other American government delegates, were gunned down by Jones’ followers. Following the shooting, Jones orchestrated a mass murder-suicide of his followers, which took the lives of 918 commune members, 304 of them children, in an act that entailed drinking grape-flavored Flavor Aid laced with cyanide. The tragic event inspired the phrase “drink the Kool-Aid.”
That’s not DiCaprio’s only ujpcoming project: he also stars in Don’t Look Up for Netflix this December, where he plays a scientist trying to convince the public that a comet is heading for Earth. He leads an all-star cast that includes Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Chris Evans, Cate Blanchett, Gina Gershon, Himesh Patel, Mark Rylance, Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi, Ariana Grande, Melanie Lynskey, Michael Chiklis, and Ron Perlman.
See DiCaprio in this Don’t Look Up clip below:
After that, he’ll star in Martin Scorsese’s The Killers Of The Flower Moon along with Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons and Brendan Fraser. The film follows the F.B.I. investigation into a series of murders of Osage Native Americans in Oklahoma in the first third of the 20th century.
