The Man Who Loved Grizzlies: According to Variety, Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way has teamed with Columbia Pictures to produce the biopic The Man Who Loved Grizzlies. The project will be developed with an eye toward DiCaprio starring as Tim Treadwell, an environmentalist who was fatally mauled by the bears he wanted to protect.

The project is based on Ned Zeman's article published in the May issue of Vanity Fair. Zeman will adapt the script with Daniel Barnz.

Treadwell was a controversial and charismatic figure, one Zeman described as the bears' self-appointed goodwill ambassador who looked like a Malibu surfer. Spending months at a time in the wilds of Alaska, he took the anti-poaching cause as his own -- even appearing on David Letterman's show -- but had no training beyond his talents as a photographer and naturalist.

When Treadwell and his partner, Amie Huguenard, were killed in October, they came under criticism for what some viewed as willful naivete, an insistence on viewing the bears as a natural friend rather than potential predator.