Will Smith in next Quentin Tarantino movie?

As Quentin Tarantino’s new Sergio Leone-inspired script circulates in Hollywood, I Am Legend star Will Smith is reportedly the frontrunner for the lead role in Django Unchained, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The film tells the story Django, a freed slave who teams up with a German bounty hunter to search for his wife. The German eventually trains Django, and together they team up to take down an evil plantation owner.

The part of the German bounty hunter was reportedly written specifically for Christoph Waltz, who starred alongside Brad Pitt in Tarantino ‘s Inglourious Basterds in 2009. Another Tarantino favorite, Samuel L. Jackson is also up for a key role.

In a 2007 interview with the Daily Telegraph, Tarantino discussed an idea for a form of spaghetti western set in America’s Deep South which he called "a southern", stating that he wanted "to do movies that deal with America’s horrible past with slavery and stuff but do them like spaghetti westerns, not like big issue movies.

“I want to do them like they’re genre films, but they deal with everything that America has never dealt with because it’s ashamed of it, and other countries don’t really deal with because they don’t feel they have the right to.”

Currently, no formal offer has been made yet to Smith. Tarantino is reportedly planning a fall shoot, possibly in Louisiana.

In the meantime, Will Smith is filming Men in Black III due in theaters May 25, 2012. The actor is busy these next few years, especially with Independence Day 2 and 3 for 2013 and 2014, and Hancock 2 for 2013.