Leonardo DiCaprio is impressed with the success Emma Stone and husband Dave McCary have had with their production company, Fruit Tree, and a source exclusively tells In Touch the Oscar-winning actor is angling to pursue any projects alongside them, ideally with the involvement of their mutual friend and costar Jennifer Lawrence, as he seeks to change his entire approach to taking roles.

“Leo is finally taking the next generation seriously and making overtures toward working with more stars who are quite a bit younger than him after resisting the idea for years,” the insider says. “The breakthrough seems to be his successful team-up with Jennifer Lawrence in Don’t Look Up! in 2021.”

After filming the Netflix movie, The Revenant star, 50, had nothing but praise to lay on his costar Jennifer, 34, even if she was less than thrilled during their first day shooting, telling Stephen Colbert he and Timothée Chalamet drove her “crazy.” Nevertheless by the end of the production cycle she was warming up to working with Leo, who has “been trying to find another project for them to work on together since,” according to the source.

The insider notes The Aviator star “has also been keenly impressed with Emma Stone’s recent run of acclaimed and profitable films as both star and as a producer alongside her husband Dave.”

The Easy A star, 36, started the company alongside her husband in 2020 just after they were married and have hit some production home runs after immediately inking a deal with powerhouse studio A24. She’s also been killing it in her own acting career as of late, including a Best Actress win at the Oscars in 2024 for her performance in Poor Things.

The source adds that Leo’s approach to keeping himself a star involves constantly making sure he’s not clearly the most famous actor in the movie, though his mindset is beginning to shift. “In Leo’s upcoming film this year, One Battle After Another, he’s sharing the screen for significant periods of time with Alana Haim, who is also more or less a generation younger than him,” the insider explains. “It’s all about respect for Leo, in the sense that he just can’t and has never been able to work opposite actors he doesn’t view as total giants. For years, that meant turning to that older generation of actors like Robert DeNiro, Russell Crowe and even Brad Pitt as costars, but Leo is finally loosening up and realizing that he is one of those old guys now, and it wouldn’t be productive to keep pairing himself up with all these legends of yesteryear anymore.” 

Just like his idol and The Departed costar Jack Nicholson, Leo plans on aging into roles that suit him and staying an A-list name for a long time to come, which is why he’s changing his perspective on which jobs he pursues. “Leo can still get away with playing somebody in his late thirties or early forties, but he’s also a realist and doesn’t have a Peter Pan syndrome where he’s afraid to get old,” the insider says. 

“He’s embracing his age and he wants to collaborate with the leading stars who are younger than him — it’s a very smart and evolved strategy!”