Leo goes bad, real bad.
Leonardo DiCaprio‘s dream of playing a killer role is finally coming true as Paramount has just closed a splashy deal to acquire the Erik Larson book The “Devil In The White City: Murder, Magic And Madness At The Fair That Changed America”. The project, which has been in the works for more than a decade will reunite DiCaprio with his “The Wolf Of Wall Street” director Martin Scorsese, who will be directing for Paramount.
Paramount won an auction to buy the movie rights to the book and Billy Ray (of “Captain Phillips” and “The Hunger Games” fame) will write the script. Producers are DiCaprio and his Appian Way partner Jennifer Davisson along with Stacey Sher, Scorsese and Rick Yorn.
“The Devil In The White City” will see DiCaprio take on the role of H.H. Holmes, a serial killer who murdered between 27 and 200 people, mostly single young women. Set against the backdrop of the 1892 Chicago World’s Fair, “The Devil in The White City” centres on the intertwining stories of fair architect Daniel H. Burnham and Holmes, who used a hotel he built near the fairground to draw in his victims.
The movie adaption of Larson’s book was first put in development in Hollywood by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner through their Cruise/Wagner banner via the shingle’s deal with Paramount, but the option lapsed in 2004. Paramount reacquired the film frights in 2007 and set it up with producers Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher, whose shingle Double Feature Films had a first-look deal with the studio at that point in time.
Apart from “The Wolf Of Wall Street” DiCaprio and Scorses have worked together on “Gangs of New York”, “The Aviator”, “The Departed” and “Shutter Island“.
“The Devil In The White” is still in the early stages of production so no release date has been set but we’re excited to see what DiCaprio and Scorsese has in store for us.
