DiCaprio & Stone Unite for 'Travis McGee'

20th Century Fox has announced that Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone has signed on board to develop, and possibly direct, their upcoming Travis McGee project, based on John McDonald’s long-running detective series, with Leonardo DiCaprio already set to star as the eponymous gumshoe.

Industry trade paper Variety reports that The Departed star, currently seen in Martin Scorsese’s nerve-shredding psycho thriller, Shutter Island, will play the self-described ‘beach bum’ detective, who in a break from convention is neither law enforcement nor a licensed detective, running a makeshift operation out of his Florida houseboat. With a script already in place the potential franchise will begin with the first of McDonald’s twenty-one novels, The Deep Blue Goodbye, which follows McGee’s hunt for sunken World War II treasure.

Meanwhile, Oliver Stone’s latest picture, the long-delayed Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, has received yet another pushback. Following the announcement that the film would premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Fox has opted to move the release from April to September. Money Never Sleeps, starring Shia LaBeouf, is the follow-up to Wall Street, Stone’s rags-to-riches-to-prison saga which starred Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen in the film that many critics point to as one of the defining pictures of the 1980’s.