Golden Globe nominee Leonardo DiCaprio is eyeing to star in movie version of “Beat the Reaper.” New Regency is acquiring screen rights.

The novel by Josh Bazell is about a Manhattan emergency room doctor, whose life becomes full of twists and turns when a mobster identifies the doc from his earlier life as a hitman who went into the witness protection program.

According to Variety, the book is just being published by Little Brown, which acquired the title in an eight-house auction in 2007. Bazell, a medical intern, was in his hospital scrubs on the night shift as publishers waged a seven-figure fight for his first novel.