Steven Spielberg and Leonardo DiCaprio are in early talks to collaborate on a Ulysses S. Grant biopic at Lionsgate. There’s no deal in place for Spielberg to direct, and Lionsgate had no comment on the report. The Grant project was set up at Lionsgate with DiCaprio and Appian Way partner Jennifer Davisson producing a movie version of the Ron Chernow’s 2017 biography Grant.
Grant has been widely recognized as a military tactician for leading the Union Army to victory over the Confederacy during the Civil War under the supervision of President Abraham Lincoln, winning key battles at Shiloh and Vicksburg. He won two terms as President as a successor to Andrew Johnson and stabilized the economy along with attempting to remove the last vestiges of slavery, which included working to crush the Ku Klux Klan. David James Kelly is adapting the biography.
Spielberg received his eighth Oscar directing nomination for helming 2013’s Civil War epic Lincoln, for which Daniel Day-Lewis won his third Academy Award for best actor. He directed DiCaprio in 2002’s Catch Me if You Can. DiCaprio’s next project is Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, set against the backdrop of the 1969 Manson Family murders.
