Getty Image
Academy Award winners and longtime collaborators Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese are reviving their film adaptation of Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City at 20th Century Studios. The project has been in development hell since DiCaprio acquired the rights to the book in 2010.
According to reports, after previously abandoning the project — at one stage, it was being set up as a TV series at Hulu with Keanu Reeves set to star — Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio are reuniting for a film adaptation of Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, a true story about a prolific serial killer at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America — written by Erik Larson, was first published in 2004 — tells the simultaneous stories of architect Daniel Burnham, tasked with designing “The White City” for the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, and serial killer H.H. Holmes, whose widely considered to be the first serial killer in the history of the United States, having reportedly committed over two dozen murders between 1891 and 1894.
At the time of his execution, Holmes confessed to the murders of 27 people, however, some of those people were still confirmed to be alive, making the exact number of murders he committed unconfirmed.
“DiCaprio and Scorsese have been developing the project for some time, and sources say they always felt this was a story that has resonated throughout the years and still does. DiCaprio first landed rights to the book in 2010, and though the project has gone through various stages of development over the years, insiders say that following a meeting with 20th Century execs, all parties were on board to tell this story at the theatrical level. Sources add that there is currently no script for the pic.” [via Deadline]
DiCaprio and Scorsese have previously collaborated on six films together: Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Killers of the Flower Moon.