Hollywood is full of famous collaborations, Wright and Pegg, Burton and Depp and Ford and Wayne, but perhaps the most famous one of recent memory is that between one of the greatest living directors Martin Scorsese and the phenomenal acting talent that is Leonardo DiCaprio. The two have worked together on five projects including GANGS OF NEW YORK, THE AVIATOR and 2013’s THE WOLF OF WALLSTREET.
The two are set to return to work together on an adaptation of the true crime novel THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY.
The story of THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY is a shocking too-crazy-to-be-true tale. Following Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, the first documented serial killer of the modern world who built an elaborate hotel in the shadow of the 1893 Chicago world fair.
The hotel, often referred to in popular culture as the ‘Murder Castle’, was built with the sole purpose of luring people to stay within it, only for Dr. Holmes to murder them in extravagant ways, booby-trapping each room with different ways of killing people. From locking them in soundproof rooms, in which Dr. Holmes would hook up to gas pipes to asphyxiate them, to rooms that were covered in iron plates where blow torches would dispense from the ceiling burning the victim alive. Although when caught, Dr. Holmes, confessed to killing 27 people it is assumed that his actual total was over 200.
DiCaprio bought the rights to the book ‘The Devil In The White City” all the way back in 2010 and has been sitting in development hell since. Scorsese will direct the project and will quite possibly be the darkest film that the pairing has ever tackled.
Although nothing is confirmed, it is assumed that DiCaprio will star as Dr. Holmes and will chronicle the building of the hotel up until his eventual capture and execution.
The screenplay will be written by CAPTAIN PHILLIPS and HUNGER GAMES scribe Billy Ray.
This is all confirmed and factual I kid you not! For more information on the subject matter please read the brilliant original novel by Erik Larson.
No News on the release date just yet, but for more information as it happens keep checking back to Film and TV Now.
