Marty, Leo's High Five?

Mon., Sep. 12, 2005 2:45 PM PDT by Josh Grossberg

You'd think these guys sick would be sick of each other by now, but if Paramount Pictures gets its way, Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese may team up yet again for an ever elusive Oscar.

According to Daily Variety, the studio has optioned the rights to The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Edmund Morris' Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, in which DiCaprio would star in the title role under the direction of Scorsese.

The film would trace how Teddy Roosevelt, a privileged but underwhelming New York politician plagued by asthma, transformed himself into the burly commander of the Rough Riders who helped his country win the Spanish-American War and eventually became one of the great presidents of the 20th century. (Hey, the weight gain worked for Robert De Niro in Raging Bull.)

Roosevelt will be adapted by Nicholas Meyer, who wrote the screenplay for The Human Stain but is perhaps better known among sci-fi cognoscenti for writing and directing Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn.

"From the first page of the book...[Roosevelt's] life reads like a movie that requires a big bag of popcorn," Meyer told Variety. "We start at 25, as he begins to transform himself through sheer force of will from this asthmatic, nearsighted 125-pounder to this Sherman tank of a man so tough that he once got shot on the way to make a speech and completed his talk, bleeding with a bullet in his chest."

DiCaprio and Scorsese first joined forces for 2002's Gangs of New York and quickly followed with last year's The Aviator. While both films were nominated for Best Picture and Best Director for Scorsese, and DiCaprio getting a Best Actor nod for The Aviator, the two A-listers were shut out in the statuette department.

The duo are now shooting their latest Oscar bait, The Departed. A reimagining of the hit Hong Kong police drama Infernal Affairs, the film costars Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon and Alec Baldwin. DiCaprio and Scorsese are also attached to a fourth film together, a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1948 classic, Drunken Angel.

Even with two Scorsese collaborations in the pipeline, the actor still has a way to go before he catches up with De Niro, who's served as the filmmaker's go-to guy in eight-films, including some of his best, like Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull.

The Rise of Roosevelt is being produced by Scorsese (who knows a thing or two about asthma having suffered from the respiratory ailment himself since he was a child) along with DiCaprio and his Appian Way partner Brad Simpson. No word when it will start shooting, but if all goes to plan, the film could be in theaters by 2007.