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Hollywood Reporter

Tuesday, 02-May-2000 09:22:30

By Zorianna Kit and Cathy Dunkley

Cameron Diaz has committed to join Leonardo DiCaprio in
Martin Scorsese's $90 million-budgeted drama "Gangs of New
York" after flirting with the project during the past month.
Lensing is slated to get under way in Rome in August.

The long-in-the-works "Gangs" is set during the era of Tammany
Hall's peak of political corruption in the 1840s and traces the
history of Irish crime gangs in New York.

DiCaprio, who committed to the project in February 1999, stars
as gangster Amsterdam Vallon, a man who organized street
gangs in an effort to control the city's street wars between the
Italian and Irish immigrants. Diaz will play the role of a master
thief who teams up with and falls in love with Vallon.

Steve Zaillian ("Schindler's List") wrote the most recent draft of
the script for the project, which Miramax will distribute
domestically with IEG handling foreign rights. Initial Entertainment
Group's investment in the film is about $65 million. Miramax
co-chair Harvey Weinstein is overseeing the project with
Miramax running the production. IEG worked with Diaz on
"Very Bad Things," which it financed and produced.

"Gangs" was initially set up at Universal Pictures in 1991 before
the underlying rights were sold to the Walt Disney Co. Michael
Ovitz's Artists Management Group packaged the project,
repping DiCaprio and Scorsese -- the latter of whom developed
the project at Disney with his longtime collaborator Jay Cocks --
and also Diaz. Disney-owned Miramax came aboard in October
to co-finance and handle domestic distribution, while IEG
stepped in to handle international rights.

Alberto Grimaldi -- whose credits date to the mid-1960s,
including "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" -- is producing the
project after settling a lawsuit against AMG, Michael Ovitz, the
Walt Disney Co., Universal and IEG last month. Filed in
December, Grimaldi's suit sought an injunction against Universal
and Disney for leaving him out of the film's development process
and attempting to force him to share producing credit with
Scorsese. The settlement gave Grimaldi sole production credit
and first position producer credit, a cash settlement north of $3
million and significant participation in the film's backend. Barbara
De Fina is no longer involved with the project and will receive no
producing credit on the film.

Diaz, also repped by ICM, is before cameras in Columbia
Pictures' "Charlie's' Angels." She most recently starred in "Being
John Malkovich" and "Any Given Sunday." Diaz also stars in
United Artists' Cannes film festival entry "Things You Can Tell
Just by Looking at Her" and the upcoming Fine Line Features'
"Invisible Circus."
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Reports from four territories -- Australia, Denmark, Indonesia
and Japan -- indicated that Leonardo DiCaprio's "The Beach"
picked up $1.6 million over the weekend from 309 screens,
lifting its international cume to $90.7 million.

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