I hope Leonardo DiCaprio isn't addicted as James Caan was battling his own addiction to cocaine at a time when the original film based on the short novel The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoyevsky was filmed.
Yes, Paramount is developing a remake of the 1974 gambling drama directed by Karel Reisz and originally scribed by James Toback. Now, William Monahan is penning the script as a potential directing vehicle for Martin Scorsese and, therefore, the writing/directing team behind the Oscar-winning The Departed are set to reunite one more time.
The original plot-line follows Axel Freed, a New York City English professor with a gambling addiction that begins to spiral out of control. Gambling problems cause him to extort money from his mother and convinces a student to shave points off a basketball game.
Scorsese is no stranger to remakes (Cape Fear, The Age of Innocence, The Departed) and DiCaprio is no stranger to working with Scorsese (Shutter Island, The Departed, The Aviator). So, thumbs up for another remake!
The actor's just filming J. Edgar directed by Clint Eastwood, and he's also slated to star as Jay Gatsby in Baz Luhrmann's remake of The Great Gatsby, based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic. DiCaprio then takes a villainous turn in the Quentin Tarantino-directed Django Unchained for The Weinstein Company.
The director has been openly active lately. Hugo Cabret, slated for a Thanksgiving release, marks Scorsese's first foray into true family fare, and he anticipates shooting an adaptation of Shusaku Endo's novel, ‘Silence.' Furthermore, Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio will collaborate for the fifth time on The Wolf of Wall Street, an adaptation of the Jordan Belfort memoir.
Check out an exceptional study of the psyche of the high stakes gambler, in relation to Desire and its willed manifestation:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw7yoEepL30[/youtube]
The Gambler (1974)
