Leonardo DiCaprio is in final talks to star as 1970s religious cult leader Jim Jones for a new feature film at MGM.
Scott Rosenberg (“Con Air,” “Venom”) penned the script and will executive produce “Jim Jones” which will follow the Christian minister and mass murderer who setup his own remote jungle commune in Jonestown, Guyana.
He attracted a thousand of followers to live there with him, calling it a “socialist paradise free from the oppression of the United States government”. When U.S. Democrat rep Leo Ryan investigated of his own volition in 1978, he and several followers trying to flee with him were gunned down whilst boarding a return flight.
Soon after Jones ordered and likely coerced a mass murder-suicide that claimed the lives of 918 commune members, 304 of them children, via cyanide-laced Flavor Aid.
DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson will produce via his Appian Way production company.
Source: Deadline
