Evidently, Jonah Hill and Leonardo DiCaprio got on like a house on fire during the filming of Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street.” So they wasted no time lining up another project; an adaptation of a Vanity Fair article, "American Nightmare: The Ballad Of Richard Jewell” about the man falsely accused of bombing the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. 20th Century Fox hired screenwriter Billy Ray to pen the script earlier this year.
And it appears that Ray’s script has attracted Paul Greengrass. Ray wrote “Captain Phillips,” which Greengrass directed to much acclaim last year, and according to Deadline, Greengrass is circling the director’s chair for this untitled drama.
According to the original Vanity Fair article, Richard Jewell was identified as the F.B.I.’s prime suspect in the Olympic Park bombing. In the piece, the then 34-year-old security guard told his story, “his brief moment as a national hero, his hounding by the Feds and the press, and his eccentric friendship with the unknown southern lawyer who helped him through his public torment.”
No deal has been closed, but Greengrass directing Hill and DiCaprio from a script by Billy Ray? Yeah, we’d pay to see that.
