Martin Scorsese returns to familiar territory with his next project, a remake of 1974’s The Gambler, and plans to work again with Leonardo DiCaprio, who will play the role that earned James Caan a Golden Globe nomination.
The director also re-teams with script writer William Monahan, who wrote the Oscar winner The Departed.
According to Deadline Hollywood, which announced the news, the original screenwriter James Toback (Bugsy), who wrote the semi-autobiographical story based loosely on the novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, is not pleased with the development.
The 1974 film, directed by Karel Reisz (The French Lieutenant’s Woman), follows the story of a revered New York English professor who has a secret gambling addition and gets deeper into debt, taking desperate measures to obtain money.
Scorsese’s next film is Hugo, a 3D family film based on the novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, with Chloe Moretz (Kick-Ass) and Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat). It is due in theaters November 23.
DiCaprio will next be seen in J. Edgar, a Clint Eastwood film about the secret-harboring head of the FBI for almost 50 years. It costars Armie Hammer (The Social Network) and Naomi Watts (Fair Game) and opens on November 9.
The Hollywood Reporter suggests that Scorsese will next shoot Silence, an adaptation of a novel by Shusaku Endo about a Jesuit missionary in 17th century Japan. Daniel Day-Lewis, Benicio Del Toro and Gael Garcia Bernal are attached to the project, due in 2013.