Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio spent a lot of years trying to get an adaptation of Erik Larson’s book The Devil in the White City off the ground and into a feature film. It never happened, and recently we learned the project would instead shift to a TV miniseries on Hulu. And now Deadline reports that it may have a star, and what a star it is: Keanu Reeves.
Reeves is in talks to star in The Devil in the White City, based on Larson’s non-fiction novel that tells two parallel stories, both true. They center on two men, “an architect and a serial killer, whose fates were forever linked by The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. It follows Daniel H. Burnham, a brilliant and fastidious architect racing to make his mark on the world and Henry H. Holmes, a handsome and cunning doctor who fashioned his own pharmaceutical “Murder Castle” on fair grounds – a palace built to seduce, torture and mutilate young women.”
It’s unclear what Reeves’ role would be. When DiCaprio was attached, he was going to play the murderer Holmes. Now DiCaprio and Scorsese are involved merely as exec-producers.
This is obviously a major event series for Hulu, and adding Reeves to the mix only enhances that. Reeves has never starred in something like this for TV before, and what better place to start than by working with Scorsese and DiCaprio? Hopefully this news means we’ll be getting more info on Devil in the White City and when we can finally see it.
