THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY, Renewed Hopes
A new deal between Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company Appian Way and Paramount Pictures brings renewed attention to the long-simmering film adaptation of Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City (RH/Crown, 2003). Deadline reports that the movie, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring the actor could be “DiCaprio’s next major project.”
As we observed last August, the adaptation has had a long gestation period. Tom Cruise acquired the rights, planning to star, in 2003 but nothing came of it and DiCaprio bought the rights in 2010. It was not until screenwriter Billy Ray (The Hunger Games, Captain Phillips) figured out a way to tell the book’s dual story that power players got behind the adaptation once again.
DiCaprio clearly likes book adaptations. His production company is currently at work on Live By Night, based on the Dennis Lehane novel and directed by Ben Affleck.
He has two other book adaptations in mind as well, Variety reports. One is based on the forthcoming YA post-apocalyptic novel Sandcastle Empire by debut author Kayla Olson, to be published by HarperTeen in the summer of 2017, according to the author’s website. Also in development is another long simmering project, a limited television series adaptation of A. Scott Berg’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Charles Lindbergh.
A caution, however, as The Guardian reports, “Appian Way is a serial purchaser of rights to promising Hollywood projects, not all of which see the light of day.”