Leonardo DiCaprio to star in Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of The Devil in the White City
Back in 2010 Leonardo DiCaprio purchased the film rights for The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, a 2003 historical non-fiction book by Erik Larson.
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Set in Chicago during the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, it tells the story of World’s Fair architect Daniel Burnham and of H. H. Holmes, a criminal figure widely considered the first serial killer in the United States.
Deadline is reporting that 20th Century is working on to the project with Leonardo DiCaprio in talks to star and Martin Scorsese in talks to direct. DiCaprio and Scorsese would also produce along with Stacey Sher, Rick Yorn and DiCaprio’s Appian Way partner Jennifer Davisson.
This is the book’s synopsis.
One was an architect. The other a serial killer. This is the incredible story of these two men and their realization of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, and its amazing ‘White City’; one of the wonders of the world.
The architect was Daniel H. Burnham, the driving force behind the White City, the massive, visionary landscape of white buildings set in a wonderland of canals and gardens.
The killer was H. H. Holmes, a handsome doctor with striking blue eyes. He used the attraction of the great fair – and his own devilish charms – to lure scores of young women to their deaths.
While Burnham overcame politics, infighting, personality clashes and Chicago’s infamous weather to transform the swamps of Jackson Park into the greatest show on Earth, Holmes built his own edifice just west of the fairground. He called it the World’s Fair Hotel.
In reality it was a torture palace, a gas chamber, a crematorium.
These two disparate but driven men are brought to life in this mesmerizing, murderous tale of the legendary Fair that transformed America and set it on course for the twentieth century . . .