It’s a story that sounds eerily familiar to both the Scorsese mafia picture starring DiCaprio, The Departed, and the new Johnny Depp feature, Black Mass, which are based loosely, and directly on crime boss/informant Whitey Bulger’s life respectively.
It’s unclear whether DiCaprio, who last appeared in a recurring role on the small screen 25 years ago as Luke Brower on Growing Pains, will also star in the series, but his turns on The Departed, and the more recent feature, The Wolf of Wall Street, will surely make him an asset to the production, on or off camera. The latter film may be doubly relevant, as THR claims the series will delve into the connection between the “Wall Street era” and the mafia at the height of ’80s commercialism.
The five-time Academy Award-nominated actor/producer will team up with writer Brett Johnson, best known for TV crime drama Ray Donovan and period drama Mad Men. Johnson will also executive produce alongside Jennifer Davisson Killoran, Bryan Zuriff (Ray Donovan), Charles Pacheco, Jennifer Erwin, and Dan Pearson.
In March, DiCaprio announced that his production company Appian Way will work with Netflix on a series of environmental and conservation-focused documentaries. That deal comes after the DiCaprio-Netflix doc Virunga was nominated for an Academy Award this year. Also upcoming for Appian Way is a TV adaptation of Simon Toyne’s supernatural thriller The Searcher.
DiCaprio will also co-star in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s gritty and dark survival thriller The Revenant with Tom Hardy, which debuts on Christmas, and a new Martin Scorsese film, The Devil in the White City.
