In 2007, Leonardo DiCaprio won a bidding war against Brad Pitt for the rights to Jordan Belfort’s memoir The Wolf of Wall Street, which followed the downward spiral (and eventual jailing) of one of the Street’s brightest stars as he got hooked on drugs and prostitutes — while the FBI nipped at his heels. “It was almost like a modern-day Caligula,” says DiCaprio, who stars as Belfort alongside Jonah Hill as his henchman Donnie Azoff in a movie that also features Matthew McConaughey and Margot Robbie in prominent roles. The film held the promise of reuniting DiCaprio with director Martin Scorsese (The Departed), but nobody wanted to finance it until indie producer Red Granite Pictures agreed to fully fund the $100 million-plus drama, which Paramount is releasing domestically.

Source: THR