Jamie Foxx the frontrunner for Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained? Dicaprio officially signed?

Grain of salt time, folks. Showbiz 411 seems to indicate that Jamie Foxx(Ray) is the lead dog to star in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained. They don't actually site any sources, though, so who knows where the information comes from. Foxx was one of the names mentioned last week as a possible choice to take the gig, since Tarantino's first choice, Will Smith, appears to fading into the distance. The others apparently in contention for the Django role? The Wire's Idris Elba, which would be awesome. And Chris Tucker, who hasn't made a movie without Jackie Chan in it since......I can't remember that far back.

The role of Django hasto be the biggest one in Hollywood right now, for obvious reasons. Tarantino is coming off his biggest hit ever in Inglourious Basterds. Brad Pitt garnered a lot of acclaim for his performance, really being one of the first true A-listers Tarantino has had fronting one of his films. Will Smith was supposed to fill that superstar void this time, but right now it looks like Leonardo Dicaprio is the guy to be that powerhouse name. Showbiz also makes an unfounded claim that Dicaprio is "definitely signed" as the evil slavemaster, Calvin Candie. Django, a freed slave, teams up with a German bounty hunter(Christoph Waltz) to get revenge. Samuel L. Jackson is Candie's house slave who keeps the others in line violently.

I like Foxx as an actor, but do I envision him as the physically powerful and violent Django? Not really, but then again I never envisioned Pitt as a drawling Nazi hunter, either. And let's face it, Foxx has been on a slide ever since his Oscar winning performance in Ray. He's been relegated to a lot of supporting bits lately(Due Date, Valentine's Day), and something like this could be just what's needed to get him back into the acting spotlight. Foxx will be seen next in Horrible Bosses, starring Jason Bateman and Jason Sudeikis.