DiCaprio to Play Dr. Henry Howard Holmes

I think that Leonardo DiCaprio has developed tremendously as an actor, with movies like Blood Diamond, Revolutionary Road, Shutter Island and Inception on his CV.

I also admire his curiosity for new challenges and characters, and his latest project, which is to crawl under the skin of one of America’s first and sickest serial killer, Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, seems very interesting.

Dr. Henry Howard Holmes was a creative, but completely stark mad, man who entertained himself by torturing and killing nearly 200 people in the late 1800s. Holmes built a hotel that contained mazes, windowless rooms, doorways opening to brick walls, stairways to nowhere and other weird constructions, which he lured his victims into, before killing.

He also had a chute, which he used to transport his victims’ bodies down to a secret room, in the basement, where he cut them apart and made skeleton models, which he then sold to various medical schools.

Now, DiCaprio has secured the film rights for the book “The Devil in the White City”, written by Erik Larson in 2003, which is based upon the lives of Daniel H. Burnham, the architect behind the 1893 World’s Fair, and the grisly Dr. Holmes.

I think it’s a bold and interesting move of DiCaprio to play the sinister Holmes, instead of the quite normal Mr. Burnham and I guess that he will not make us disappointed with his interpretation of him.

As of right now, no director or other actors are attached to the project, but DiCaprio’s company Appian Way Productions will produce the movie, in cooperation with the Double Feature Films.

Buy the book – The Devil in the White City >>>