Eastwood wants DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover

Tasty biopic bait. Kevin Klawitter tips us to details at Deadline:

Leonardo DiCaprio is in early talks to play FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in Hoover, an epic drama that Clint Eastwood will direct and that he and Brian Grazer will produce with Rob Lorenz through Imagine and Malpaso. Talks with Leo are just getting underway, but I’m told that DiCaprio will play the lead role in the film written by Dustin Lance Black, with production to begin later this year…

Sources tell me that Imagine had been developing “the story of the beginning of the FBI” for a year when it finally showed the script to Universal, where the reaction was negative. “This is exactly what we don’t want to make,” Uni execs reacted. “It’s period, and we have lost enough money with these things.” But then Grazer got the screenplay to pal Clint (they did The Changeling and have had a personal relationship ever since), the two men met about it in mid-February, and suddenly Universal has a tough decision to make since. As a Uni exec admits, “Clint is an amazing director with an extraordinary track record, and you can’t possibly dismiss anything he gets excited about.