Jared Leto is set to star in a film based on the life of iconic artist Andy Warhol, which will be titled Warhol. Leto will be also reportedly co-produce the film alongside Oscar-winning producer Michael De Luca, who is known for his work on truth-based film The Social Network.
As The Hollywood Reporter reports, the screenplay will be written by Terence Winter, the man responsible for the Wolf of Wall Street script and creator of Boardwalk Empire. Winter will reportedly be drawing on the 1989 Victor Bockris book Warhol: The Biography as a starting basis for the script.
In the 1960s, Warhol made a huge impact on the art world, recontextualising American consumerism as art. His iconic work with Campbell’s soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles and numerous celebrities are some of this best known pieces.
Warhol was open about being gay at a time when homophobia was rife in the US, and such public ownership of homosexuality was a rarity. Those who knew him described him as a hypochondriac, and as having two sides to his personality: cold, quiet and introverted and loud, eccentric and brilliant.
He created a lot of multimedia work in his infamous New York Studio, The Factory, including film, music, paintings, photography and silk screens. The Factory became a stomping ground for many artists of the era, and was also the location where radical feminist writer and later diagnosed schizophrenic Valerie Solanas attempted (and failed) to murder Warhol by shooting him.
Warhol also spent some time managing Lou Reed’s band Velvet Underground, before becoming an integral part of the iconic New York nightclub, Studio 54. He went on to mentor many artists of the time before he died, in 1987.
Jared Leto is known for playing extreme characters, like the Joker in Suicide Squad, and his Oscar winning role as Ron Woodroff, a homosexual man dying from AIDS in Dallas Buyers Club. Andy Warhol seems to be the perfect next step in his career.
