After Leonardo DiCaprio gets mauled by a bear on Christmas Day 2015 (and maybe later a wolf), he and New Regency will finally get around to making The Crowded Room, a multiple-personality biopic that’s been through several personalities already.
DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions has just signed on produce the film, in which DiCaprio stars as Billy Milligan, the first person to use multiple personality disorder as a successful legal defense. Kidnapped writers Jason Smilovic and Todd Katzberg are working on the screenplay about a man with 24 personalities, based on Daniel Keyes’ 1981 biography The Minds Of Billy Milligan.
Hollywood’s been struggling to make The Crowded Room for more than 15 years now. In the mid-’90s, Joel Schumacher angled to direct Brad Pitt, and later Billy Crudup, in the film. Before it ended up in his abandoned projects pile, James Cameron also eyed John Cusack for the lead role, and directors David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh, Nick Cassavetes, and even Danny DeVito have all been attached at various points. That’s not to mention would-be stars Matthew McConaughey, Sean Penn, and Johnny Depp, who would presumably have given each of the personalities its own silly hat.