Martin Scorsese casts Leonardo DiCaprio in new Frank Sinatra biopic

Leonardo DiCaprio is reportedly set to play the iconic American singer and actor Frank Sinatra in a biopic directed by Martin Scorsese. The pair previously worked together last year on the Oscar-nominated historical crime epic Killers of the Flower Moon and have been working together since 2002. 

Jennifer Lawerence is also rumoured to be attached to the film, portraying Sinatra’s second wife, Ava Gardner. Both DiCaprio and Lawrence have previously worked together on Netflix’s 2021 comedy/ sci-fi flick Don’t Look Up.  

Variety reported that Scorsese plans to shoot two films back to back, the first about Jesus and the second about Sinatra. However, the legendary singer’s daughter, Tina Sinatra, controls her father’s estate and has not given Scorsese her blessing to make the biopic (this may be because Sinatra’s intense affair with Gardner, which will presumably be featured in the film, was the cause for her parents’ divorce in 1951). Nevertheless, this hasn’t stopped the 81-year-old director from attaching huge names to the production. 

The other, untitled project will reportedly be based on writer Shūsaku Endō’s 1973 book, A Life of Jesus. Little is known about the casting for this, but shooting is set to start later this year, and both Andrew Garfield and Miles Teller have been linked to the film. “I’m contemplating it right now,” the director said in February this year, speaking at the Berlin Film Festival. “What kind of film [it will be] I’m not quite sure, but I want to make something unique and different that could be thought-provoking and I hope also entertaining. I’m not quite sure yet how to go about it.”