What Leonardo DiCaprio Is Doing Next, and What He Is Not

Leonardo DiCaprio is currently promoting his Oscar campaign for One Battle After Another, arguably the best movie in … years. He’s already won Best Actor from the National Board of Review and is almost certain to land his eighth Oscar nomination. He’ll probably win his second.

After Oscar campaign season ends, however, what Leonardo DiCaprio won’t be doing is David Fincher’s The Adventures Of Cliff Booth, the spin-off of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. That movie will star Brad Pitt and Timothy Olyphant, but DiCaprio told Deadline that he won’t be in it. “There were some talks about it early on. Ultimately, I cannot wait to see the Cliff Booth story, but I’m not in it. I think David Fincher’s the perfect man for the job. Quentin is a huge fan of his work, I’m a huge fan of his work, and there’s nobody better to carry on that lineage and tell that story. I think it’s the next phase of Cliff Booth’s life. I’m excited to see it.”

What he will be making, however, is Michael Mann’s sequel to Heat, though it’s still not clear whether he will play the Val Kilmer role or the Al Pacino role. It’s also “a ways away from production,” though it will also star Christian Bale. That’s a good cast. “The book is already out there, so there are no big secrets that I’m divulging,” he told Deadline. “It’s set in the future, and the past, from that pivotal moment in what I think is the great crime noir film of my lifetime.”

But if not doing Cliff Booth next and Heat 2 is “a ways away,” what’s next? It’s probably not What Happens at Night, another collaboration with Martin Scorsese in which he’ll star alongside Jennifer Lawrence. They’re “still putting all the pieces together” on that one.

So what is actually next? Dunno. It’s probably not the other Scorsese projects he’s been attached to in recent years, like a Theodore Roosevelt movie (in development hell), an adaptation of The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder (scrapped), or a crime movie with Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson (parked). He’s also bailed on Damien Chazelle’s Evel Knievel biopic.

So “a ways away” on Heat 2 actually seems like the closest thing he has to a next project.