Leonardo DiCaprio is to play his namesake Leonardo da Vinci in an upcoming biopic about the Italian Renaissance icon.
DiCaprio's mother decided to name the actor after da Vinci when she felt him kick for the first time in utero while she was viewing one of the artist's works in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
The rights to the film were the subject of a bidding war between Paramount and Universal, with the former spending a seven-figure sum to secure the project.
DiCaprio will also produce the film, which will be based on the Walter Isaacson book Leonardo da Vinci, which will be released in October.
The 42-year-old actor was last seen in 2015's The Revenant, which saw him finally earn an Oscar after being nominated five times previously; once for Best Supporting Actor (What's Eating Gilbert Grape), three times for Best Actor (The Aviator, Blood Diamond, The Wolf of Wall Street) and once for Best Motion Picture (The Wolf of Wall Street).
He has two projects in the pre-production stages; Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon and The Black Hand, which is based on the Stephan Talty book of the same name.
A release schedule for the Leonardo da Vinci biopic has yet to be revealed.
