Martin Scorsese to make Frank Sinatra biopic

It is a marriage made in movie heaven: the great Martin Scorsese, director of Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and the Oscar-winning The Departed, is to make a biopic about Frank Sinatra, actor, singer and friend of gangsters and presidents alike. The news was announced in Hollywood just as Scorsese was leaving for Cannes where he is due to show not a new film of his own, but a fabulous restored print he's organised of The Red Shoes, made in 1948 by his cinematic heroes Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

Scorsese is known to have flirted with a Sinatra biopic for years. Now it is definite after two years of legal wrangling by film executives to secure the life and music rights from Frank Sinatra Enterprises.

This means that Scorsese can use Sinatra's own recordings for the soundtrack and will be free to cast a non-singing actor in the title role. Not surprisingly, Leonardo DiCaprio, a Scorsese regular - from Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed and the upcoming Shutter Island - is already a hot favourite to play Ol' Blue Eyes.

The script, by Phil Alden Robinson (Field of Dreams), is being written for what producer Cathy Shulman says will be an "unconventional" biopic - not a "cradle-to-the-grave traditional portrait", but "more of a collage".

There's a lot to cover. Rolling Stone magazine calls Sinatra "indisputably the 20th century's greatest singer of popular song". In a career that spanned more than 50 years, he made a staggering 1,400 music recordings, including such hits as New York, New York, Strangers in the Night, My Way and many, many others. He acted in 58 films, including the hit musicals High Society and Guys and Dolls, and the romantic drama From Here to Eternity for which he won the Oscar for best supporting actor.

He was married four times - to Nancy Barbato, Ava Gardner (above, with Sinatra in 1952), Mia Farrow and Baraba Max - and when he died exactly 11 years ago today, the lights on the Las Vegas strip were dimmed in his honour.

His daughter Tina Sinatra said yesterday: "My father had great admiration for the talent of the people he chose to work with, and the talented people who worked with my father had great admiration for him. It is personally pleasing to me that this paradigm continues with Marty Scorsese at the helm of the Sinatra film."

Footnote: The restored version of Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes, which stars Anton Walbrook, Moira Shearer and Marius Goring, will be shown at the Cannes festival on May 15 and again at the Edinburgh film festival on June 18. A special edition DVD is due to be released next month. ·