Let me clear from the start: this story is not about Leonardo DiCaprio thinking he could or should play a 13th century Persion poet and scholar. This is not a story about a studio approaching Leonardo DiCaprio, a white American, to play one of the most famous and beloved figures in Islamic literature. This story is about the screenwriter working on the script for a bio-pic of Jalaluddin al-Rumi and the screenwriter’s dream-cast is LEO. For Rumi.

An Oscar-winning screenwriter has agreed to work on a biopic about the 13th-century poet Jalaluddin al-Rumi. David Franzoni, who wrote the script for the 2000 blockbuster Gladiator, and Stephen Joel Brown, a producer on the Rumi film, said they wanted to challenge the stereotypical portrayal of Muslim characters in western cinema by charting the life of the great Sufi scholar.

“He’s like a Shakespeare,” Franzoni said. “He’s a character who has enormous talent and worth to his society and his people, and obviously resonates today. Those people are always worth exploring.”

Producers hope to begin shooting the film next year. Franzoni and Brown were in Istanbul last week to meet with Rumi experts and visited the mystic’s mausoleum in Konya. Rumi’s spiritual and mystical epics, the Masnavi and the Divan, are widely considered among the best poetry ever written and have been translated into numerous languages. The Sufi teacher, who fled in his youth from his birthplace in present-day Afghanistan during the Mongol invasion, travelled through Baghdad, Mecca and Damascus with his family as a refugee before settling in Konya, in modern-day Turkey, where he died in old age.

Franzoni and Brown said they would like Leonardo DiCaprio to play Rumi, and Robert Downey Jr to star as Shams of Tabriz, though they said it was too early to begin casting. “This is the level of casting that we’re talking about,” said Brown, chief executive of Y Productions, who was also a producer on other hit films such as Se7en, The Fugitive and the Devil’s Advocate. The movie will be co-produced by Y Productions and Es Film.