Jean Dujardin of ‘The Artist’ Joins Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese for ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’

June 14, 2012

By Kristin Fritz

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Jean Dujardin/Photo © S Bukley/Shutterstock

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It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything new about “The Wolf of Wall Street,” the next movie that will become part of the repertoire of work created by dream team Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio. The latest word, though, was well worth the wait. French actor Jean Dujardin, who won an Oscar earlier this year for Best Lead Actor for “The Artist,” will join the cast, which includes DiCaprio in the lead, Oscar nominee Jonah Hill, and Kyle Chandler.

The film will be based on the best-selling memoir of the same name by Jordan Belfort. Belfort was one of the most brilliant — and conniving — young men who walked Wall Street in the 1990s. He worked quick and got rich fast, bouncing back and forth between his hard-partying lifestyle and his wife and kids. His motivation was clear, his ethics — or lack thereof — obscene, and inevitably and ultimately, his world collapsed in on him.

Wall Street, the money to be made, and the mistakes to follow is a vast world with an ending most of us are now at least tangentially familiar with. We’ve all heard the stories of this one or that one who lost something or other. This story, though, epitomizes all of that — and once in the hands of Scorsese and DiCaprio, we can only expect that they’ll bring it to screen in a completely mesmerizing and fitting manner. The two first worked together on “Gangs of New York” ten years ago, and they’ve only continued to do brilliant work (“The Departed” and “Shutter Island,” for example) since.

As for Dujardin, this is the first American movie he’s made since the wildly successful “The Artist,” which won a total of five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. He’ll play “Jean-Jacques Handali, a suave Swiss banker who launders money for Belfort” in the movie. Sounds like a perfect fit, no? Our hope now is that the bar wasn’t set too high for him with “The Artist” — but under the direction of Scorsese, we’ve a suspicion that he’ll manage.

Tags: Jean Dujardin, Jonah, Jonah Hill, Kyle Chandler, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Scorsese, The Artist, The Wolf of Wall Street