Leonardo DiCaprio Will Play America’s ‘First Serial Killer’
And he’s reuniting with Martin Scorsese to do it.
If you’re excited for Leonardo DiCaprio’s blood-soaked performance in upcoming Western thriller The Revenant, you’ll love his next project: reuniting with director Martin Scorsese to play a 19th-century serial killer.
The film, titled Devil in the White City, follows the exploits of H.H. Holmes, the legendary pharmacist and sociopath who slaughtered dozens people in Chicago during the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, earning him the the title of ‘America’s first serial killer.’ The film is based on author Erik Larson’s 2003 nonfiction examination of his killing spree.
Just to give you a sense of how batshit crazy Holmes was, he designed a hotel, lovingly called a ‘Murder Castle’ by historians, explicitly to entrap and slaughter innocent fair-goers. “Most of the rooms were windowless, with stairways to nowhere and hallways that ended in dead ends,” notesTIME. “Holmes also built gas jets into hotel-room walls, a wooden disposal chute and person-size kiln in the basement.
“I was born with the devil in me,” Holmes once wrote, according to Larson’s book. “I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing.”
With Devil in the White City picked up by Paramount, the film will mark DiCaprio and Scorsese’s sixth collaboration. And while Leo may have missed out on an Oscar yet again with his and Scorsese’s Wolf on Wall Street, who knows: Maybe the sixth time’s a charm.
Photos by Jamie McCarthy/WireImage
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