Deadline is reporting that director Alejandro González-Iñárritu (Babel) is hoping to cast Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn as the two leads in his adaptation of Michael Punke’s revenge novel The Revenant, and that both actors have already met with the filmmaker with hopes to start shooting in the fall of 2012.
Set in the 1820s, DiCaprio would play Hugh Glass, a man bent on revenge after being mauled by a bear on a fur trapping expedition, then robbed and abandoned by the two men left behind to help him. One of those men would be played by Penn if everything works out. The film is being produced by New Regency to be distributed by 20th Century Fox.
Many other names have been rumored to adapt Punke’s novel in the last few years including director John Hillcoat (The Road) with word of Christian Bale playing the lead role in that incarnation.
