From a paranoid aviation tycoon to a mad lunatic and now a serial killer, is there any role this man cannot do?
According to Variety, Leonardo will take the form of Dr Henry Howard Holmes, the 19th century equivalent of Hannibal Lecter.
Dr Holmes, documented as one of the first serial killers in the modern sense of the term, admitted to have killed 27 women in the time surrounding the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, but it’s widely believed that he murdered over 200 victims in total.
Holmes was not your ordinary killer of dark alleys. He had pretty murderous weapons that took the form of a hotel that is today nicknamed ‘The Murder Castle’.
The building was a death trap in every sense of the word. Home to enormous furnaces, large vaults and custom build acid pits, the sadistic doctor would dispose off his victims in a variety of ways – often torturing them in said vaults. But even more disturbing is the selection of rooms that had gas lines fed into them in order to suffocate some people in their sleep.
We're anticipating that HH Holmes's quote could one day in the future, be one of Leonardo’s most iconic: “Yes I was born with the devil in me. I was born with the evil standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world, and he has been with me since”.
Holmes was also the chilling subject of Erik Larson’s bestselling 2003 book The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic And Madness At The Fair That Changed America.
The movie will be based on the Larson's book, which Leonardo bought the rights to five years ago and has now been adapted by the screenwriter of Captain Phillips, Billy Ray.
The movie will become the pair’s sixth collaboration after Gangs Of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island and The Wolf of Wall Street.
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