The Artist’s Jean Dujardin joins DiCaprio for Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street

Jean Dujardin, who picked up a best actor Academy Award for his performance in last year’s THE ARTIST, is joining Martin Scorsese’s fifth collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, based on the memoir by Jordan Belfort.  In addition to DiCaprio, Dujardin will be joining fellow castmembers Jonah Hill and Kyle Chandler.

Dujardin will be playing money-laundering Swiss banker, Jean-Jacques Handali in the pic, with DiCaprio in the lead as Belfort, Hill as his best friend and co-conspirator, Danny Porush. 

Here’s the book synopsis:

In the 1990s Jordan Belfort, former kingpin of the notorious investment firm Stratton Oakmont, became one of the most infamous names in American finance: a brilliant, conniving stock-chopper who led his merry mob on a wild ride out of the canyons of Wall Street and into a massive office on Long Island. Now, in this astounding and hilarious tell-all autobiography, Belfort narrates a story of greed, power, and excess no one could invent.

From the stormy relationship Belfort shared with his model-wife as they ran a madcap household that included two young children, a full-time staff of twenty-two, a pair of bodyguards, and hidden cameras everywhere—even as the SEC and FBI zeroed in on them—to the unbridled hedonism of his office life, here is the extraordinary story of an ordinary guy who went from hustling Italian ices at sixteen to making hundreds of millions. Until it all came crashing down…

Sounds like the GOODFELLAS of Wall Street to me.  The script is written by Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire scripter Terrance Winter, so expect this one to have some bite.  This is prime territory for Scorsese and DiCaprio and having Dujardin in the mix only adds to the flavor.  Expect more casting news to drop shortly as this starts filming in August.

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET will open sometime in 2013.