Oscar bait alert – Leonardo DiCaprio ‘in final talks’ to play cult leader Jim Jones

Leonardo is in final talks for the role, according to multiple reports (Picture: AFP)

Oscar-winner Leonardo DiCaprio is being lined up to play cult leader Jim Jones in a new drama.

In a project that we can already see as being an awards season darling, MGM has picked up a script written by Venom’s Scott Rosenberg which details the life of the 1970s cult leader, who was responsible for one of the largest mass deaths in history.

According to the Hollywood Reporter and Deadline, DiCaprio is in final talks to play Jones in the movie, called Jim Jones.

Jones found the Peoples Temple – which he promoted as a fully integrated congregation promoting Christian Socialism – in 1955, and by the 1970s he had rejected traditional Christianity and claimed to be God.

He build his commune in Guyana in 1974, and four years later told his followers to drink Flavor Aid which was laced with cyanide.

The group suicide on November 18, 1978, claimed the lives of 909 individuals, including 304 children, with the tragedy being referred to as the Jonestown Massacre.

Jim Jones was responsible for one of the largest mass deaths in US history (Picture: Janet Fries/Getty Images)

The Jonestown Massacre has already been made into a number of films, TV series and documentaries, most notably the Emmy-winning 1980 miniseries Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones, and the 2007 History Channel doc Jonestown: Paradise Lost.

The tragedy was also heavily referenced in an episode of American Horror Story: Cult.

Jim Jones will also be produced by DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson via their Appian Way company, while Rosenberg will executive producer.

DiCaprio has played a number of real-life figures in his career, including Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street, Frank Abagnale Jr in Catch Me If You Can, Howard Hughes in The Aviator and J Edgar Hoover in J Edgar.

Leo will next be seen in Don’t Look Up (Picture: Netflix)

The 46-year-old won his first Oscar for his portrayal of frontiersman Hugh Glass in 2015’s The Revenant.

DiCaprio will next be on our screens this Christmas in the star-studded Netflix movie Don’t Look Up, in which he plays an astronomer attempting to warn mankind about an approaching meteor set to destroy Earth.

The sci-fi comedy also stars Jennifer Lawrence, Jonah Hill, Timothee Chalamet, Ariana Grande, Tyler Perry, Cate Blanchett, Chris Evans, Matthew Perry, Mark Rylance, Rob Morgan, Ron Perlman, Himesh Patel, and, perhaps most excitingly, Meryl Streep as the President of the United States.

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Next year, DiCaprio will be a bit more serious in Martin Scorsese’s upcoming project Killers of the Flower Moon, in which he stars alongside Robert De Niro and Jesse Plemons.

He will play a real-life figure in that movie, too, as he has been cast as Ernest Burkhart, the nephew of convicted murderer William Hale.

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