Leonardo DiCaprio has had designs on Erik Larson’s non-fiction book The Devil in the White City for years now. He’s waited patiently and, now that the book rights have slipped back into the open market, he and production partner Jennifer Killoran have pounced, snapping up the chance to convert the tome into a film for DiCaprio to star in.
Larson’s wonderful book chronicles real-life serial killer Dr HH Holmes, who might not have gained the infamy of Jack the Ripper, but is alleged to have killed a slew of people (though he usually targeted women) around the time of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. A weird and compelling figure, it’s easy to see why DiCaprio might be looking to play him on screen, even though the result will likely be darker than anything he’s tackled in the past.
The actor/producer’s obsession with the book stretches back to late 2002, when he learned that someone else had won the rights to adapt it. Since that someone was Tom Cruise (who had already begun work on it with the help of Kathryn Bigelow and her K-19: The Widowmaker writer Christopher Kyle), DiCaprio opted instead to dig up all the public domain information about the case and hope to get his version into cinemas before Cruise had a chance.
Cut to today, and obviously neither movie made it out of development hell, but now DiCaprio, in partnership with producers Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher, has grabbed the rights back and is hunting down a writer to start on a script before taking the project out to studios. “(This is) truly a one-of-its-kind American story about our nation's first serial killer. We're exited to bring it to the big screen,” says Killoran.
Given how good the book is, we’re excited to see whether it finally makes it to the big screen…