PRESS ASSOCIATION -- Steve Carell has been offered the lead in true crime drama Foxcatcher.
The Office funnyman - known for his comedies such as The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Date Night - has been asked by Moneyball director Bennett Miller to play schizophrenic murderer John du Pont in his new film, Variety reports.
The heir to the du Pont chemical fortune, John du Pont, was a schizophrenic who built a wrestling gym called Team Foxcatcher on his Pennsylvania estate. In 1996, he shot and killed his close friend, Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler David Schultz, at the training centre.
Schultz had often tried to help du Pont, and police never established a motive for the crime, which was witnessed by Schultz's wife and du Pont's head of security. After the murder, du Pont locked himself in his mansion for two days while he negotiated with police on the telephone.
He died last year in a Pennsylvania prison at the age of 72.
Foxcatcher has been written by E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman, who also wrote the script for Miller's award-winning debut film Capote, a biopic about writer Truman Capote starring Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Carell has just finished filming Lorene Scafaria's comedy Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World and is now working on Great Hope Springs with Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones.