THR is reporting that Jonah Hill is negotiating a deal to star in Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf Of Wall Street, which currently has Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role. After his Oscar nomination last year for Moneyball, it seems as if Hill is starting to venture down the dramatic route a bit more.
He’ll star with James Franco in the Michael Finkle biopic True Story later this year and he was also offered a role in Django Unchained, but had to pass due to scheduling conflicts.
The Wolf Of Wall Street is written by Boardwalk Empire showrunner Terrence Winter and is based on Jordan Belfort’s memoir of the same name. DiCaprio will be playing Belfort, who was a stockbroker in the 1990’s and served 20 months in prison for securities fraud. Hill is set to play Danny Porush, “who is convinced by his future best friend and business partner Belfort to quit his job in furniture sales and enter the lucrative yet volatile world of stock brokering.”
The film will begin production this August in New York and will be released in 2013.
