Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio Reviving ‘Devil in the White City’

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(L to R) Academy Award winner Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio at the Governors Ball after the 79th Annual Academy Awards at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, CA on Sunday, February 25, 2007. Credit/Provider: Courtesy of AMPAS. Copyright: ©A.M.P.A.S.

Preview:

Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio are in talks for ‘The Devil in the White City.’
They’ve been ready to produce this for years now.
20th Century Studios is on board to develop it.

An adaptation of Erik Larson’s 2003 literary non-fiction tome, ‘The Devil in the White City‘, has been touted so many times in the years since it was first optioned, fans have begun to feel like ‘Peanuts’ Charlie Brown with the football –– every time things seem to start going in the right direction (i.e. towards screens), it is cruelly snatched away.

Well, buckle up folks… because we’re back in hopeful mode as longtime proponents Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio (you know, people who between then should really be able to get any movie made at this point) are, via Deadline, now in talks to board the latest development, which has been set up at Disney’s 20th Century Studios.

Not Yet Rated

Dr. HH Holmes, a cunning serial killer, is believed to have murdered anywhere from 27 to 200 people at a time when the city of Chicago was enthralled with hosting… Read the Plot

Can it finally, actually be produced in some fashion? We can only hope. But we’ve been down this road before…

What’s the history of ‘The Devil in the White City’ adaptation?

Martin Scorsese arrives on the red carpet of the 96th Oscars® at the Dolby® Theatre at Ovation Hollywood on Sunday, March 10, 2024. Credit/Provider: Mike Baker ©A.M.P.A.S. Copyright: ©A.M.P.A.S.

Make your favorite beverage and settle in, because this one has quite the history.

Larson’s book, whose full title is ‘The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America,’ was first published in 2003.

The scrupulously researched and endlessly compelling tome covers a true story but does it in thrilling novelistic style.

It’s divided into four parts, the first three happening in Chicago between 1890 and 1893, while part four of the book takes place in Philadelphia circa 1895.

The book interweaves the true tales of Daniel Burnham, the architect behind the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and H. H. Holmes, a serial killer who lured his victims to their deaths in his elaborately constructed “Murder Castle.”

Burnham ran into many challenges when it came to the World’s Fair including a fire, difficulty engineering the buildings to be safe, and a lack of funds for the fair.

H.H. Holmes was responsible for multiple murders. His “dungeon” was equipped with secret rooms, torture chambers, and he even had access to a big furnace to cremate the bodies of his victims. Holmes was known as a charming man who had the ability to seduce his primarily female victims. Holmes was tried and executed in 1896 for a single killing, of his accomplice Benjamin Pitezel.

Before it was even on shelves, Tom Cruise became aware of it, nabbing the rights quickly and kicking off work on an adaptation with the help of Kathryn Bigelow and her ‘K-19: The Widowmaker’ writer Christopher Kyle.

Leonardo DiCaprio attends the ‘Don’t Look Up’ World Premiere at Jazz at Lincoln Center on December 05, 2021 in New York City. Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Netflix.

Not to be outdone, DiCaprio dug up all the public domain information he could about the case and started to put the pieces together for his own movie, looking to beat Cruise to theaters.

Yet years went by with little forward movement for either project, and the rights eventually ended up back on the open market in 2010. Seeing his chance, DiCaprio snapped them up, intending to star in (as Holmes) and produce the project with his Appian Way business partner Jennifer Davisson Killoran.

This was their statement at the time:

“ ‘The Devil in the White City’ is truly a one-of-its-kind American story about our nation’s first serial killer. We’re excited to bring it to the big screen.”

With the rights in hand, DiCaprio and his team set about working up their new version. And, in a move that should surprise exactly no one, the actor planned to reunite with regular collaborator Martin Scorsese. Warner Bros. was quick to grab the package given that combo, and then had ‘The Imitation Game’s Graham Moore write at least one draft of the script.

Yet it didn’t quite gel, and then Paramount won the rights in a 2015 bidding war, sealing a new deal with DiCaprio and co, while Billy Ray wrote the latest version of the script.

When that fell into limbo, Scorsese and DiCaprio switched gears, targeting streaming TV in a 2022 version set up at Hulu with ‘Little Children’s Todd Field directing and ‘Castle Rock’ veteran Sam Shaw aboard to serve as writer, showrunner and exec producer.

If that wasn’t enough, the Hulu series landed Keanu Reeves to star, though it was never confirmed who he’d play (our thoughts would surely tend towards Daniel Burnham).

But a year later, the brakes were back on as Reeves and Field left the project.

Deadline cautions that the new incarnation, once more planned as a movie, is still at a nascent stage. Scorsese would direct and DiCaprio’s looking to star as well as produce, but there is no script in existence yet.

So, now we wait. Again…

What else are Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio working on?

(L to R) Director Martin Scorsese, Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio on the set of ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’. Photo: Apple TV+.

We’ll be waiting for a while, since Scorsese has at least two major feature projects on hand –– an adaptation of Shūsaku Endō’s novel ‘A Life of Jesus’ and a biopic of singer Frank Sinatra, as well as ‘Shipwrecks of Sicily,’ a documentary about marine archaeology.

DiCaprio will next be seen in Paul Thomas Anderson’s as yet untitled new film, due out in August.

When will ‘The Devil in the White City’ be in theaters?

Not soon enough if you ask us, but right now it doesn’t have a formal release date. First it has to make it properly through the development process for the 734th time.

Or, as Charlie Brown might exclaim, “Oh, good grief…”