Meyer To Adapt Roosevelt Book For Scorsese, DiCaprio

Nicholas Meyer, who directed two Star Trek feature films and worked on the screenplay for a third, will write the script for a new Leonardo DiCaprio-Martin Scorsese collaboration, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Edmund Morris.

Variety reported that Paramount Pictures had optioned the biography and Meyer would write the script about the life of the 26th U.S. president for director Scorsese, who is co-producing the film along with Daniella Taplin, who licensed the book, and DiCaprio's production company Appian Way.

DiCaprio will play the young Roosevelt, who changed his public image from that of a slender, frequently ill politician into the leader of the Rough Riders. "His life reads like a movie that requires a big bag of popcorn," noted Meyer. "We start at 25, as he begins to transform himself through sheer force of will from this asthmatic, nearsighted 125-pounder to this Sherman tank of a man so tough that he once got shot on the way to make a speech and completed his talk, bleeding with a bullet in his chest."

Meyer, who also adapted The Human Stain, had worked on the screenplay with Taplin before DiCaprio and Scorsese became involved in the project. The director overcame debilitating childhood asthma just as Roosevelt did. This will be his fourth film with DiCaprio, who starred as Howard Hughes in the biopic The Aviator. That film's screenplay was written by another Star Trek alumnus, Nemesis scribe John Logan.

Meyer's Trek credits, which include directing Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country as well as writing the screenplay for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, may be found at the Internet Movie Database.

The original news item came from Variety.

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