Leonardo DiCaprio tapped to play Sam Phillips

The life of Sam Phillips and the story of Sun Records continue to be hot commodities in Hollywood.

On the heels of the recent CMT Network series “Million Dollar Quarter” – focusing on Phillips and the pioneering Memphis rock and roll label he founded (set to premiere in 2017) – Deadline.com is reporting that Paramount Pictures has acquired the rights to Peter Guralnick’s 2015 biography of Phillips, “The Man Who Invented Rock ‘N’ Roll,” with the idea of bringing it to the big screen with a big name attached.

According to Deadline, the project is being developed by Appian Way Productions’ Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson for “DiCaprio to play the producer who recorded and discovered Elvis Presley, Ike Turner, Howlin’ Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins among others.”

Other producers on the project include Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, Memphis music-loving financier Steve Bing and Guralnick, the music historian who penned the definitive two-part Elvis Presley biography, “Last Train To Memphis”/”Careless Love.”

A film adaptation of Guralnick’s Elvis bio has been in development for nearly two decades. Most recently, several of the same players involved with the Phillips project – including Bing and Jagger – have been working on bringing Presley’s story to the screen as well.

DiCaprio’s personal involvement, however, seems to augur well for the chances of a Phillips flick becoming a reality. DiCaprio is reportedly slated to star in another page-to-screen adaptation first, a Martin Scorsese-directed version of Erik Larson’s historic serial killer book “The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America.”