Leo keeps busy with new Michael Mann P.I. project and more. Much more.

By Damara Popoola

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 5/2/07 — Someone take Leonardo DiCaprio’s pen away before he kills himself. The boy who couldn’t say no has added another film to the 10 projects he has lined up in 2008. He’s already got environmental documentary “11th Hour,” one of the only small budget films in his slate of major studio productions, wrapped and ready for a 2007 release, but the roles just keep on coming.

The latest is Michael Mann’s as yet untitled noir detective drama set on the 1930s MGM lot. As the character Mann created especially for DiCaprio, he’d play a private investigator hired to investigate a starlet’s possible murder of her husband, according to Variety.

Leo’s even returning to television as co-creator and executive producer of reality show “E-Topia” which centers on a town transformed into an eco-friendly area. The proposed series is currently being pitched to networks, but it’s likely to be snapped up given the country’s growing green fever.

That’s not all the “Blood Diamond” actor is considering, though. His agents are negotiating a deal that would send DiCaprio to Broadway to recreate the role Al Pacino played 30 years ago in “The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel.” If he accepts, DiCaprio would make his Broadway debut as Hummel, an American soldier in Vietnam who has an African-American alter ego named Ardell. No mention of how the actor would set aside enough time for a long Broadway run.

Fitting the play into his schedule would mean the 32-year-old star would head to New York in the fall, right after completing Sam Mendes’ “Revolutionary Road” with “Titanic” co-star Kate Winslet. “Road” is based on Richard Yates’ 1961 novel about a content suburban couple battling their true desires and the need to conform in post-war America. It films this summer with a tentative 2009 release date.

How doing all this is possible remains to be seen, since Leo’s also supposed to be reuniting with “Departed” writer William Monahan in the fall on the adaptation of the David Ignatius novel, “Body of Lies”. Ridley Scott (“Gladiator,” “Alien”) will direct and DiCaprio intends to play an ex-journalist turned CIA agent sent to work with Jordan’s intelligence chief to track an Al-Qaeda leader rumored to be planning attacks against America.

Also in the works is “Blink”, based on Malcolm Gladwell’s book of short stories about first impressions and snap judgments. DiCaprio produces and stars in the film, which is currently in preproduction.

Then there’s a slew of other films the Oscar-nominated actor is rumored to be linked to: spy thriller “The Infiltrator” about the British intelligence agency planting double agents in the Irish Republican Army; Paramount Pictures’ “The Chancellor Manuscript” based on a Robert Ludlum (“The Bourne Supremacy“) novel; and an untitled Timothy Leary biopic which DiCaprio would produce. And with all of these projects having tentative 2008 release dates, apparently all one has to do to get Leo on board is ask.

DiCaprio also may be pairing for a third and fourth time with Scorsese, this time on a possible film based on Edmund Morris’s “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. He would no doubt be up for the role of young Teddy in the film with a screenplay commissioned from Nicholas Meyer.

Another potential project is “The Wolf of Wall Street”, a film adaptation of Jordan Belfort’s upcoming tell-all. Again, nothing is official, but Scorsese could direct with DiCaprio playing Belfort, a Long Island stockbroker who served 20 months in prison for refusing to be an informant in a widespread securities fraud case.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros. has picked up distribution for “11th Hour,” according to the Hollywood Reporter, increasing the eco-mentary’s profile significantly. The film features interviews about the Earth’s ecosystem with more than 50 scientists, thinkers and world leaders, including former Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev, scientist Steven Hawking and former CIA chief James Woolsey.

We can’t see how Hollywood’s golden boy will be able to make and promote all of these films, so it is surely only a matter of time until we see which projects end up on DiCaprio’s cutting room floor. Or Leo end up there himself.