5 Feb – After starring together in the Oscar-buzzed "The Wolf of Wall Street" and have each of the actors nominated for an Academy Award each, Jonah Hill and Leonardo DiCaprio are set to star together again in "The Ballad of Richard Jewell". "The Ballad Of Richard Jewell", about the case of Olympic security guard Richard Jewell, digs into what happened with Jewell during the 1996 event. Initially he was hailed as a hero for finding a suspicious backpack in the sports compound and helping clear bystanders before the bomb contained within it detonated, killing two people on the day and injuring 111 others. Jewell was initially praised as a hero before the Atlanta Journal Constitution, working on a law enforcement tip, wrote a story that painted Jewell as fitting the profile of a possible bomber and the media descended, camping outside where Jewell lived with his mother and spurring an FBI investigation. The story became a national scandal, even though he was cleared three months later.
The article the film will be based on is from a Vanity Fair article by Marie Brenner back in 1997. Hill is attached to play Jewell and DiCaprio would be Watson Bryant, the unknown lawyer, more used to real estate work, who helped defend Jewell and clear his name. Even after Hill and DiCaprio joined forces for "The Wolf of Wall Street", the actors seemed inseparable, and recently during Hill's hosting gig at "Saturday Night Live", DiCaprio even showed up during his opening monologue to poke fun at Hill's quick rise to fame and the infamous Titanic scene.