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DiCaprio to star in Sierra Leone thriller
Leonardo DiCaprio is to star in a thriller centred around Sierra Leone's civil war. He will play a smuggler of so-called conflict diamonds, the West African country's prime natural resource which was at the centre of the 1999 conflict.
The Blood Diamond's plot centres on the relationship between DiCaprio's character and a farmer whose son has been pressganged into the Revolutionary United Front's army of child soldiers.
Ed Zwick, who directed Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, will be at the helm. He was originally only due to co-write the script with Samurai screenwriter Marshall Herskovitz, but became so interested in the subject that he agreed to direct as well, according to the trade magazine Variety.
DiCaprio is keeping himself busy at the moment. He is currently finishing production on Martin Scorsese's mob thriller The Departed, a remake of the Hong Kong hit Infernal Affairs. After The Blood Diamond, scheduled to film early next year, the American actor will star in a new adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's Spanish Civil War classic, For Whom The Bell Tolls.