Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael Bay have formed an unusual alliance to produce a movie focusing on the Rwandan national cycling team.
The 40-year-old actor has not been attached to star in the movie and 50-year-old Bay was not set to direct it, according to an article on Thursday by The Hollywood Reporter.
The film will be directed by Orlando von Einsiedel who directed the critically acclaimed 2014 documentary Virunga.
Virunga focused on the fight to save the world’s last mountain gorillas at Virunga National park in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Oscar-nominated documentary was produced by DiCaprio’s production company Appian Way Productions and has been available since November on the Netflix streaming service.
The new Rwandan project will be produced by Appian Way and Bay Films.
It does not yet have a script but will center on Jacques ‘Jock’ Boyer, who in 1981 became the first American to participate in the Tour de France cycling race.
Boyer, 59, was an outsider in the racing circuit known for his meat-free diet that was heavy on nuts and berries and his strong devotion to religion.
He retired aged 32 and was inducted in 1998 into the US Cycling Hall of Fame.
Boyer had an affair with a teenager and was convicted in November 2002 of lewd behavior with a minor.
He was sentenced to a year in jail and five years probation and completed his sentence in 2006.
Boyer since 2007 has mostly lived in Rwanda where he has helped train Rwandan boys who survived the Rwandan Civil War in the 1990s.
He forged them into Team Rwanda that included Adrien Niyonshuti, 28, who lost six brothers in the Rwandan Genocide.
Niyonshuti carried the Rwandan national flag during the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics and competed in the cross-country mountain bike race.
DiCaprio can next be seen on the big screen in the Western thriller The Revenant portraying American frontiersman Hugh Glass.
Bay has been directing the upcoming action thriller 13 Hours based on the September 2012 attack of the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.
Source: Daily Mail