Samantha Morton and Chris Cooper circling Dan Futterman's Truman Capote biopic (13493)

Oscar nominee Samantha Morton and Oscar winner Chris Cooper are in negotiations to star in an untitled feature revolving around Truman Capote. Philip Seymour Hoffman is set to play the noted author in the United Artists feature based on the book Capote: A Biography by Gerald Clarke. The film concentrates on the period when Capote was writing In Cold Blood, his so-called nonfiction novel published in 1965 about the murder of a Kansas family. It centers on Capote's relationship with Perry Smith, one of the killers whose story is recounted in In Cold Blood. Morton would play Capote's friend, To Kill a Mockingbird novelist Harper Lee, while Cooper would play the investigator in the In Cold Blood crime. Filming is scheduled to start in the fall. Bennett Miller, who previously shot the 1998 documentary The Cruise, will direct from a screenplay by Judging Amy and Will & Grace actor Dan Futterman. Morton received an Academy Award nomination this year for In America. Cooper won an Oscar last year for Adaptation.

In related Capote news, Mark Wahlberg has dropped out of Every Word Is True, a rival Capote project about the same period that is set up at Warner Independent Pictures. Wahlberg was to play Smith.