(Thanks to Shay for this article!)

Hollywood Reporter: More on Baz/Leo and also New Scorsese/Leo projects

By Zorianna Kit and Chris Gardner

Leonardo DiCaprio is in negotiations to star in director Baz Luhrmann and producer Dino De Laurentiis' historical epic about Alexander the Great for Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox. Production will begin in first-quarter 2003 in Morocco.

"If he can say, 'I'm king of the world,' then he can certainly command the world," Martha De Laurentiis said of DiCaprio. "He is Alexander. He's such a great actor and can carry that part."

Additionally, Luhrmann and Dino De Laurentiis have teamed to open new, permanent soundstages in Morocco, for which an opening reception is scheduled Sept. 6. The as-yet-unnamed studio facility, a partnership between the Dino De Laurentiis Co. and Luhrmann's Bazmark Films, will be headquartered in Ouarzazate, Morocco, and will be privately financed by Dino and Martha De Laurentiis. The three stages -- which Dino De Laurentiis said will take about four months to construct -- will be used for "Alexander" but will remain permanent fixtures in Ouarzazate for future productions.

"We've shot a few movies there," said Martha De Laurentiis, referring to the productions "Solomon and Sheeba" and "Slave of Dreams." "And quite a lot of films do pass through and film there using the surrounding hundreds of miles of desert; there are snow-capped mountains to one side, the Sahara to the other. It's incredible."

During the Sept. 6 visit, the filmmakers will be meeting with the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, who is lending his full support to the production along with 5,000 soldiers and 1,000 horses.

DiCaprio had been attached to star in a Martin Scorsese-directed project about Alexander for Graham King's Initial Entertainment Group, the team behind his upcoming Miramax Films feature "Gangs of New York." Scorsese is now likely to join the DiCaprio-Lurhmann project as a producer, and there is some talk of combining the IEG "Alexander" script, written by Peter Buchman and Christopher McQuarrie, with Universal/Fox's script by Ted Tally, who adapted the material from a trio of novels by Italian author-academic Valerio Manfredi.

Dino and Martha De Laurentiis optioned Manfredi's novels more than a year ago and began working to condense their 1,200 pages (HR 5/3/01). A month later, Tally came aboard to adapt and Universal joined the project (HR 6/26/01). Several months ago, Luhrmann began meeting with Tally and then went location scouting before committing to the project last month (HR 7/24).

The status of several competing projects about Alexander remain in question -- they include the Oliver Stone-directed "Alexander" project at Intermedia, which Colin Farrell has been eyeing, and a 10-part HBO miniseries that, according to sources, has been put on hold.

As for DiCaprio and Scorsese, they are now believed to be planning a biopic of Howard Hughes at IEG.

The duo also is out to studios with a feature pitch based on four science fiction books from novelist Dan Simmons: "Hyperion," "Fall of Hyperion," "Endymion" and "Rise of Endymion." The project is said to have attracted bids from three competing studios but is not yet set up.

DiCaprio is repped by the Firm and Steve Warren.