Source: Variety

Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way is moving forward with a biopic on Timothy Leary, hiring screenwriter Craig Lucas and Leary archivist Michael Horowitz to develop the screenplay, reports Variety.

The DiCaprio-produced take on the life of the writer-psychologist will follow him from his enrollment at West Point in the early 1940s through his escape from prison in 1970. Though Leary's work touched on many different fields, he is best known as an advocate of the therapeutic and spiritual benefits of LSD.

DiCaprio knew Leary, who died in 1996, and has long had a desire to develop a film on the controversial activist with an eye to topline, according to his reps. DiCaprio, George DiCaprio and Brad Simpson are producing the currently untitled project under their first-look deal with Warner Bros. Pictures. Hillard Elkins of Elkins Entertainment also is producing.