Quentin Tarantino is lining up Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt for his forthcoming tribute to the Dirty Dozen films, Inglorious Bastards.

The film-maker has been shopping his script for the wartime tale, which he wants to screen in two sections, around Hollywood studios in the past few weeks, and has now set his sights on two of the world's biggest stars to play two of the main characters.

Tarantino met Pitt yesterday in France, where the actor is residing with wife Angelina Jolie following the birth of the couple's twins, to discuss the role of Lt Aldo Raine, aka Aldo The Apache, the hard-as-nails head honcho of the Bastards, a crack unit parachuted behind enemy lines with the aim of putting as many Nazis as possible under the ground.

According to Hollywood industry bible Variety, he will meet DiCaprio tomorrow to discuss the role of the film's chief villain, the German colonel Landa, a horrible individual whose nickname is The Jewhunter.

Variety reports that several studios view the script for Bastards as "vintage Tarantino", but the addition of a couple of A-list actors would surely help oil the cogs of any future deal. The film-maker's stock has dipped in Hollywood following the ill-fated venture that was Grindhouse, and he is funding his new film without help from Harvey Weinstein, formerly of Miramax, now of the Weinstein Company, for the first time.

Pitt played the small but memorable role of a stoner in the Tarantino-scripted, Tony Scott-directed True Romance, while DiCaprio would be making his first appearance for the film-maker. The film will shoot this autumn in Germany and France.