Fox looks to lock up DiCaprio 'Prison' pic
Tamahori ready to take helm
"Stanford" is being produced by David Manson, AMG's Rick Yorn (who also manages DiCaprio), George DiCaprio and Industry Entertainment's Nick Wechsler.
The project originated at HBO with a script by Michael Lazarou, and later moved to Artisan Entertainment.
Jim Uhls, who scripted the Fox 2000 pic "Fight Club," is penning a rewrite of the screenplay, which is based on an actual experiment conducted at Stanford University in the summer of 1971, when a professor named Phil Zimburdo turned the basement of a psychology building into a mock prison. The randomly chosen subjects were 19- and 20-year-old students who were divided into experimental camps of either prison guards or prisoners.
What was to be a two-week experiment was cut short after six days because of the level of cruelty and sadism that erupted among the participants, mainly those playing guards.
If a deal can be finalized for the film and the various attachments, "Stanford" would be DiCaprio's fourth pic for Fox; he previously starred in James Cameron's "Titanic," Baz Luhrmann's "Romeo + Juliet" and currently is lensing Danny Boyle's "The Beach," all for Tom Rothman's 20th film division.
And though he has been attached to the project for some time, a deal also would need to be hammered out for Tamahori, who previously directed the Alec Baldwin-Anthony Hopkins starrer "The Edge" for Fox. Tamahori, who is repped by ICM, would seem to be the perfect fit for the job, having shown his ability to capture sudden bursts of violence in his films "Once Were Warriors," "Mulholland Falls" and "The Edge."
Once a deal is reached, Fox exec VP Peter Rice will oversee the project for the studio.
