Baz will wait for Leo Caprio The director dispels rumours of his favourite star not playing Alexander in his next film

Arthur J Pais

Seeking to bury rumours that Leonardo DiCaprio may not be available to play Alexander in the epic movie project, filmmaker Baz Luhrmann said last week: "I specifically want him in the movie." Luhrmann, who is in New York to promote his eagerly awaited Broadway show La Boheme added, “and he wants specifically to be in the movie, too.”

DiCaprio, who had one of his first big hits in Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, the second film directed by Luhrmann, has completed two major films one after another. The movies Catch Me If You Can and Gangs Of New York are both being released in the second half of December. He is expected to act in a medium budget film, following a contract he had signed recently.

But Luhrmann seems to be willing to wait for his favourite star. He might shoot the scenes which do not require DiCaprio first and thus let the star complete his other obligations.

Meanwhile, Luhrmann is anxiously waiting for the reviews of La Boheme, also waiting to see what kind of box-office jump the positive reviews will produce for the $7 million production.

La Boheme, the reinvented version of the classic opera, is now previewing on Broadway where it will open on Monday, December 9.

Luhrmann, along with his wife Catharine Martin, the costume and scenic designer who won the Oscar for Moulin Rouge, has invigorated the classic with young and dynamic actors, gorgeous and dramatic scenery and lively pacing. He describes the show as his most audacious and ambitious work as yet. It is sung entirely in Italian, with subtitles. "When Puccini wrote La Boheme in the 19th century, opera was a popular work of art," he said. "And I want to bring back that popularity to opera." Hence the Broadway venue. The show, which had a full house two month limited engagement in San Francisco, has been getting prolonged standing ovations during the New York previews.

His next project would even be bolder and more ambitious, Luhrmann said, referring to the film on Alexander the Great, which could cost about $100 million, twice the budget of his last movie, Moulin Rouge.

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Luhrmann also said he thought for the moment he was through with the boy-meets-girl-loses-girl kind of movies. Even La Boheme is a love story, mainly revolving around the doomed relationship between a seamstress and her artistic, bohemian lover.

"I want to do something of an epic," he said. "I have been doing research and thinking of Alexander for ten years." Though the preliminary script is ready and he will going to Morocco early next year to scout locations, he still continues to read voraciously on Alexander. Recently, one of his publicists sent him a copy of Partha Bose's book Alexander the Great's Art of Strategy: The Timeless Lessons of History’s Greatest Empire Builder, which is being published by a division of Penguin.

"There is so much to rediscover about Alexander," Luhrmann says, adding that the life of the Greek emperor is endlessly fascinating to him.

What fascinated him most about Alexander? "There were too many challenges he had to face but look at the huge transformation he goes through, not only a ruler but also as a conqueror," he explained. "More than any other man, he spread the ideas of Western civilisation. One could even say that he invented the genetics of Western civilisation."