DiCaprio boards Ian Fleming biopic

Leonardo DiCaprio may star as Ian Fleming in a biopic of the James Bond creator.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the actor's production company Appian Way recently jumped on board to produce the film, based on the script Fleming by Damian Stevenson.

Producer Andrew Lazar said a film about the life of Fleming had the potential to be "fascinating".

"It's going to be very different from the Bond films," Lazar commented. "There are a lot of different ways to crack biopics, but we're not trying to emulate a Bond movie... The idea that this guy's life informed the James Bond character is pretty fascinating."

Stevenson, whom DiCaprio will replace with a new writer, researched the script by looking through out-of-print biographies at the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library.

"It's the real James Bond," Stevenson said. "In England, Ian Fleming's exploits are much better known. Talking to people out here [in the US], no one had any idea that M was based on a real person, Miss Moneypenny was based on a real person."

The story begins on the eve of Fleming's wedding in 1952 - before his first Bond novel Casino Royale was published - then flashes back to his days as a Reuters journalist and Naval Intelligence Commander.