Jared Leto has announced his plans to play the Pope of Pop, Andy Warhol, in an upcoming biopic. The screenplay will be written by Terence Winter (of Boardwalk Empire and Wolf of Wall Street fame) who plans to use the Victor Bockris book, Warhol: The Biography, as a jumping-off point. (Leto and joint co-producer Michael De Luca jointly acquired the rights to the book, having had a desire to partner on a project for some time now, according to sources).

Warhol’s backstory, for the initiated (via THR):

Openly gay before such a thing was accepted, Warhol created an art studio called The Factory that attracted swaths of New York society (not to mention an unbalanced person or two, as one artist nearly killed Warhol when she shot him in 1968) and cranked out art ranging from silk screens to films to music. Warhol himself managed Lou Reed’s Velvet Underground for a while. In later years, he was a fixture in New York’s famed Studio 54 nightclub scene and mentored a new generation of artists, such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, before dying in 1987.

Warhol was a hypochondriac who, according to friends and acquaintances, vacillated between a cold and shallow person — sometimes quiet, sometimes the center of attention — to a brilliant eccentric who wore wigs and even went to hairdressers to have them cut.

The part seems tailor-made for Leto, who won an Oscar for playing a gay man dying from AIDS in 2013’s Dallas Buyers Club and drew legions of fans for his take on Batman’s insane villain The Joker in this summer’s Suicide Squad. (The actor currently is filming the untitled Blade Runner sequel being directed by Denis Villeneuve.)

So… exciting news or nah?

(Pics of Jared: Pacific Coast News)