Hollywood A-lister and environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio has bought the big-screen rights to a green-themed young adult novel called The Sandcastle Empire, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Kayla Olson’s as yet unpublished novel describes a post-apocalyptic 2049, in which climate change, coastal flooding and overpopulation have brought human civilisation to its knees. As mankind struggles for survival, a radical cabal known as the Wolfpack overthrows the authorities and takes power.
Set against the autocratic rulers is a young girl named Eden, who escapes from a Wolfpack labour camp and sets out on a journey of discovery which could furnish her with the tools to bring down the oppressors — as well as information about what happened to her missing father. At least one of these plot lines explicitly recalls the hit Hunger Games saga, which has taken close to $3 billion (Dh11.01 billion) at the global box office and helped make a huge star of the actor Jennifer Lawrence. DiCaprio, the bookmaker’s favourite to win the best actor Oscar next month for his performance as a 19th-century trapper in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s harrowing western The Revenant, picked up the rights through his production company Appian Way, and will produce with his business partner Jennifer Davisson Killoran.
Appian Way is a serial purchaser of rights to promising Hollywood projects, not all of which see the light of day. But DiCaprio’s passion for green themes suggests The Sandcastle Empire might be a priority. There is no indication about whether the actor will take a role in front of the cameras, but with his current sky-high status in Hollywood, there would be no faster way of securing studio funding for the project, at a time when young adult dystopian fare has begun to struggle at the box office. The Chloe Grace Moretz-led sci-fi film The Fifth Wave is the latest such offering to fail to live up to expectations, having taken just $20m in two weeks of release at the US box office — though it is doing better outside North America.
The Sandcastle Empire would by no means be DiCaprio’s first foray into environmental-themed film-making. In March, the actor, who has addressed the UN Climate Change summit and donated millions of dollars to help protect endangered species through the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, signed a multi-year agreement to make nature documentaries for Netflix. The publication status of Olson’s novel remains unclear. It is not available on Amazon and the author’s website does not list any published works.
