Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese are getting back together.
The director/actor duo are teaming up again for Paramount’s adaptation of Erik Larson’s 2003 book The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and the Madness at the Fair that Changed America, EW has confirmed. Billy Ray (The Hunger Games, Captain Phillips) is writing the script, and DiCaprio will play Dr. H. H. Holmes, a serial killer whom Deadline — which first reported the news— describes as “the 19th-century equivalent of Hannibal Lecter.”
The book is based on the true story of Holmes, the man behind the “Murder Castle” at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. He ultimately confessed to murdering 27 people, and may have killed as many as 200.
The Devil in the White City has been in development for a long time. Tom Cruise first acquired the rights to the book in 2003, at which time DiCaprio said he was developing his own version of Holmes’ case. According to Variety, Paramount re-acquired the rights in 2007.
This marks DiCaprio and Scorsese’s first project together since 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street. Their other films include Gangs Of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, and Shutter Island.
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