Billy Ray to Script New Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill Film

Billy Ray is coming in fresh off an Oscar nomination for his latest work with writing the script for Captain Phillips. His efforts in depicting this real life drama were pretty fantastic, and now he is set to recreate the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing drama The Ballad of Richard Jewell based on Marie Brenner's Vanity Fair article. Following the security guard who reported the bomb and cleared out bystanders, the security guard found himself a suspect of the terrorism plot.

Wolf of Wall Street's Oscar nominated duo Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill will be brought together once again for the film as well. They are the two biggest stars attached to the future script, with Hill set to play Jewell and DiCaprio the lawyer attempting to clear his name. However, both of the actors have a ton of projects going on. Hill has a good handful of films in post production, and DiCaprio was just announced to be producing the film A Boy and His Tiger. Because of this, there's no date set specifically when the film will begin its production. Fox is working right now to acquire rights to the story and hire Ray in an effort to show that the story is their major priority. Additionally, DiCaprio may be producing with Jennifer Davisson Killoran through his Appian Way banner. Hill is also set to produce along with Kevin Misher who resurrected the article.

Ray has had a lot of great credentials in the past few years with his work scripting The Hunger Games and an award from the Writers Guild of America for best adapted screenplay for Captain Phillips last month. With his work on those two films alone, I have no doubt that he will be able to capture the essence of this next film's terror.

[via Variety]