LEONARDO DICAPRIO WILL BE THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY

YES. A great book that, with the right adaptation, will make a great movie.

Utterly fascinating story (I really need to read the book) DiCaprio should be great no question.

Any rumour of a director yet?

This is what Fincher should be working on rather than the redundant DRAGON TATTOO xerox.

Agreed times a thousand - wasn't he attached at one point?

He's probably booked solid till the Rapture but I could take Christopher Nolan giving this a whirl.

Good call.

Fantastic book! Oddly enough, I found the sections dealing with the actual building and organizing of the World's Fair to be far more compelling than the series killer stuff. The urge the designers felt to create this city of the future was a wonderful contrast to the killer's urge to create a death machine. I hope any writer who hops on board would maintain this dichotomy. If the do they could come up with one hell of a film.

Nolan and Fincher are great ideas for this, but allow me to throw Andrew Dominik's name out there. It might be my desire to have him direct something that the masses might take to, but I think this material would be right in his wheelhouse.

God, Dominik would make a masterpiece out of this.

I don't need another serial killer movie from Fincher. Give it to someone else. I also hope that whoever ends up writing this finds doesn't feel the need to shoehorn the storylines together. Ah, who am I kidding, you know they will.

Oh shit, Dominik would be great. But the size of the budget he'd manage to get concerns me.

Agreed. I read the book a few years ago and felt the same way -- whenever I came across a Holmes chapter, I'd want to skim through it to get to the next World's Fair chapter. A lot of interesting stuff happened at that fair. And the drama around building up the fairgrounds and making all the arrangements just seemed more compelling to me. To be fair, I had read about Holmes in college, so perhaps that also played a part.

The 1893 Fair was the one that saw Tesla beat out Edison in a bid to provide electricity to the event. There's also a possibly apocryphal story that Pabst Blue Ribbon officially changed its name at that World's Fair (though I've seen claims that this is revisionist history on the part of PBR). With those kind of stories, how could you NOT focus on the Fair for at least half the film?

If I had twenty thumbs, they'd all be up for this suggestion.

I watched this a few weeks ago. Very interesting. I'll have to give the book a whirl.

Sounds like it's perfect for Di Caprio.

Goddamit though, now the thought of anyone except Dominik directing makes me a little sad.

I read this in a Literary Non-fiction class in college. Great book. I, too, was more interested in the World Fair sections than the Holmes section. We delved into its sources quite a bit. It is a great read.

Same here, I preferred the World Fair parts to the Holmes ones as well. I really hope they don't fully focus the movie on Holmes. In my opinion Daniel Burnham was a much more interesting character, although his achievements might be hard to portray dramatically.

I agree that Fincher would be ideal for this. He has the ability to translate the balance between Burnham and Holmes to film and make it work. But I can't see him tackle this after Dragon Tattoo, since this would be like his 4th movie with a serial killer in it...

And honestly I'd rather see his Rendezvous with Rama go in production though. Really want to see Fincher work on Sci-Fi.

For "The Devil in the White City" Leo should call up Marty.

This sounds really cool! I'd love to see DiCaprio in this kind of role. The book has sat on my 'to read' list for a long time now, and perhaps a green light on a DiCaprio lead production might be just the impetus I need to finally sit down and crack it open. That hotel sounds crazy -- and crazy fascinating.

PS You are right about DiCaprio and hats. My background in phrenology tells me it might have something to do with his skull shape.

It's a great book, but I've always thought the author threw in the serial killer aspect of the story for book sales (not many people would buy a book about the 1893 World's Fair but throw in some murders and instant best-seller status). The Fair stuff is the best stuff in the book. I was especially into the whole Ferris Wheel story.

But yeah, Dominic. He'd be great.

Yeah, it'd be charitable to claim that Holmes was even tangentially related to the fair and Larson really didn't do anything interesting with Holmes's story. This will probably be one of those "name only" adaptations and focus more on HH Holmes than the World's Fair. Which might make for a good movie. Larson's book, as written, would not.

I agree, though I have a strong feeling Fincher can make a better adaptation of said book than Niels Arden Oplev did.

This should be a great, meaty role for Leo. I'm really interested to see him play a character this monstrous after years of playing conflicted heroes.

Agree with everyone that found the World's Fair sections far more interesting than the chapters concerning Holmes. So hope that they don't let the serial killer stuff dominate the film.

I'm pretty sure Kate is Buster Bluth now.

Damn, I was really hoping this would be an HBO miniseries or something. I don't think a movie could do justice to both sides of the story.

And I agree with those who preferred the White City parts. But at the same time, what makes the book so great is the dichotomy of the two stories. I think each gains power from the other.

I haven't read the book, but it's interesting that so many of you found the World's Fair stuff more engaging. I had never heard of Holmes and just read his wiki page. Fucking hell what a whackjob.

The connection between The World Fair and Holmes seems superficial, but it's not.

On the surface the only connection between the two is that Holmes exploited the tourist surge of the fair to feed and hide his blood lust, he thrived because of it. But on the subtext level, which is also explored in the book, the connections are staggering in my opinion. The World Fair was a symbol of human optimism and ingenuity, no one even dreamed that it could spawn such depravity and horror that Holmes displayed.

Even more so, the genius architect behind the fair, Daniel Burnham is mirrored in Holmes. Burnham had his perfect White City, and Holmes his hotel that was a architectural disaster as a hotel (uneven walls, labyrinthine corridors, windowless rooms etc.), but it was also a tailor fit lair for his darkest urges. The obsessions that drove these two men are very similar as well, although their motivations are not.

For me it makes sense to mirror these two stories, not only because the setting and time-frame are the exact same, but also because both had a cultural impact and both are inseparable. Holmes wasn't called the devil of the white city for nothing. But most of all these two men, their creations and their work oppose each other so much that their stories create perfect narrative contrast.

^ Nice.

An HBO series would've indeed been the way to go with this property, as far as doing a faithful adaptation of the book. There is so much going on in the World's Fair portion of the book (so many fascinating characters and subplots), that I really don't know how they can work that into a movie along with the Holmes story. And especially how they can tie it all together (in the way a movie needs to tie together), without altering history for the purposes of the film.

Leonardo is apparently trying to make up for passing on the lead for American Psycho. This seems like a supremely interesting serial killer tale, so I'm all in for this.