Leonardo DiCaprio is set to star in “The Chancellor Manuscript,” a political thriller based on a novel by Robert Ludlum, whose books spawned the Matt Damon hits “The Bourne Identity” and “The Bourne Supremacy.”

Paramount Pictures is in final negotiations to acquire the rights to the book, which will be adapted by Michael Seitzman.

The novel was published in 1977, though the big-screen version will be updated. DiCaprio will play novelist Peter Chancellor, who is writing a thriller about Washington power brokers being blackmailed with information gathered by intelligence agencies in order to alter U.S. policy. When Chancellor’s work of fiction turns out to have stumbled into reality, he ends up on a run for his life, becoming like a character from his own novel. source