[imagesource: AP]

This is your heads up that Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio is in final talks to play a controversial religious cult leader in MGM’s upcoming feature written by Scott Rosenberg.

The biopic puts Leonardo at the centre as Jim Jones (above on the right) from the Jonestown mass suicide on November 18, 1978, that claimed more than 900 lives.

Apparently, the Rosenberg-penned script had MGM fork out a whopping seven-figure deal.

As The Hollywood Reporter notes, Leonardo has played many roles based on real-life characters, including, to name a few, the politician J. Edgar Hoover in J. Edgar, the criminal forger Frank Abagnale Jr. in Catch Me if You Can, the legendary mogul Howard Hughes in The Aviator, and corrupt stockbroker Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street.

Now, he’s adding one more character to the list as the leader behind one of the largest mass suicide events in history.

Deadline has more:

Jones founded the Peoples Temple in Indianapolis in 1955, and hailed it as a fully integrated congregation promoting Christian Socialism. By the 1970s he openly rejected traditional Christianity and claimed that he was God. He constructed Jonestown in Guyana in 1974 and spurred a following to live with him there as he touted a socialist paradise free from U.S. government oppression.

Amid rumors of human rights abuses, the American government sent a delegation led by U.S. Representative Leo Ryan in November 1978. Ryan, along with four others, would eventually be gunned down by Jones’ followers. Following the shooting, Jones orchestrated a mass murder-suicide of his followers, which took the lives of 918 commune members, 304 of them children, in an act that entailed drinking Flavor Aid laced with cyanide.

46-year old Leonardo has been nominated at the Oscars seven times, although he has only won a single award. That was for Best Actor in 2016’s The Revenant.

We know he deserves more, and are thus excited to see how he does as the creepy Jim Jones.

Otherwise, there’s also his upcoming Netflix comedy Don’t Look Up with Jennifer Lawrence, Jonah Hill, Timothée Chalamet, Meryl Streep, and Ariana Grande to look forward to.

[source:deadline&hollywoodreporter]