According to reports from Deadline, Oscar-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio is in talks for the role of U.S. criminal Jim Jones, the founder of the "People's Temple," who drove 918 of his followers (including more than 300 children) to suicide in the 1970s.
In this biopic, Leonardo DiCaprio also appears on the crew as a producer along with Jennifer Davisson, with his Appian Way. The screenplay, on the other hand, is by Scott Rosenberg, a producer and screenwriter who recently penned the script for the big screen of the two Jumanji and of the first Venom.
Founded in the 1950s in Indianapolis by preacher Jim Jones, the "People's Temple" was a voluntary lay movement with political socialist and Disciples of Christ church connotations.
Jim Jones was able to seduce hundreds of men and women, convincing them that he had mystical healing abilities and indoctrinating them with millenarian language and brainwashing techniques.
Between 1965 and the early 1970s, his preaching activities shifted to Northern California and San Francisco where his congregation was accused of financial fraud and sexual abuse among its followers, so Jones moved everything to Guyana (a country on the North Atlantic coast of South America), christening that place "Jonestown."
The movement ended on Nov. 18, 1978, with a mass suicide by means of a cyanide Flavor Aid cocktail while the reverend was found dead with a bullet wound to the head.
