Sorry, Tom Cruise fans. It now looks as if Leonardo DiCaprio will play notorious serial killer Dr. H.H. Holmes, as portrayed in Erik Larson’s 2003 nonfiction thriller The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America.
Holmes used the opportunity and cover of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair to lure unsuspecting victims to his World’s Fair Hotel, where an untold number were killed, many tortured and disposed of in the hotel’s gruesome laboratory/torture chamber/crematorium basement.
Cruise originally owned the rights and optioned them with the intent to play the crazed doctor, himself, back in 2003. But after years of competing interest, DiCaprio’s production
company recently acquired the book rights to the award-winning book and look to have hit the ground running.
Larson, of Bellevue, Washington, took home a 2004 Pacific Northwest Book Award for Devil, his second PNBA Award, following 2000 winner Isaac’s Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History.
Ha ha! Great! DiCaprio is a much better actor than Cruise.