THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY
plans for a screen adaptation
of Erik Larson’s book
Latest News
January 22, 2025: 20th Century Studios picks up The Devil in the White City as a feature film.
March 6, 2023: Hulu dropped plans to produce The Devil in the White City TV miniseries.
August 29, 2022: “According to a recent listing in Production Weekly, the series is reportedly scheduled to begin filming in March 2023 and will be filmed entirely in Chicago. Exact filming dates and locations have yet to be disclosed at this time.” [ReelChicago.com]
Development of Devil in the White City
A film adaptation of The Devil in the White City was first developed by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner through their Cruise/Wagner company, but the option lapsed in 2004. Paramount acquired the film rights in 2007 and set it up with producers Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher. Leonardo DiCaprio bought the film rights to The Devil in the White City in 2010 and began developing it as a feature film for Paramount studios to be directed by Martin Scorsese with DiCaprio was set to star in the leading role of the killer Holmes.
In 2019, the project changed to a big-budget miniseries for the streaming service Hulu. The series is being produced by Paramount TV Studios, ABC Signature, and Appian Way. Hulu canceled their plans in March 2023, but ABC Signature remains committed to the drama and will be shopping the show to new outlets.
Credits
Cast
Keanu Reeves as Daniel Burnham(confirmed 8/4/2022) (exited 10/7/2022)- Matt Damon?
- Robert Pattison?
Producers
- Sam Shaw (show runner)
- Leonardo DiCaprio
- Martin Scorsese
- Keanu Reeves
- Jennifer Davisson
- Rick Yorn
- Stacey Sher
- Lila Byock
Todd Field(exited 10/10/2022)- Mark Lafferty
- ? Emma Koskoff
Writers
Directors
Todd Field reportedly will direct the first two episodes. (out 10/10/2022)
More Information
Internet Movie Database (IMDB) page for the miniseries The Devil in the White City
Posts about Erik Larson’s 2003 book, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
An Engine of Destruction in the Krupp Gun Pavilion
In her memoir about the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, Halcyon Days in the Dream City, Mrs. D. C. Taylor describes a day when she explored the area of Jackson Park around the South Pond. The visitor from Kankakee, Illinois, “wandered away by the fortress where is housed, black and baleful, with its great yawning mouth waiting to belch forth death, the great Krupp gun; a fearful hideous thing, [...]
180. Picturesque World’s Fair – Looking East from the Golden Door
LOOKING EAST FROM THE GOLDEN DOOR.—Very few views, possibly not more than one, were taken eastward from the Golden Door. That remarkable portal was so striking in itself that it did not occur, apparently, to any one of the various photographers to take any picture in its vicinity which did not include the glittering entrance. There were numerous views near the southern extremity of the lagoons, but there was [...]
Season’s Readings 2025: New Books about the World’s Columbian Exposition
New books explore the colorful campus and souvenir coins of the Columbian Exposition and profile a host of people associated with the Fair, including architect Stanford White and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, photographer Alice Austen, exhibitors Nancy Green (who portrayed Aunt Jemima) and Louis Vuitton, and another investigation of H.H. Holmes. That devil also creeps into a supernatural thriller. Note: We provide this announcement of new titles without any compensation [...]
The Chicago Orchestra’s 1892 Premiere of Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker Suite”
One of America’s most beloved holiday artistic traditions originated in imperial Russia and came to the United States through Chicago at the time of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. On October 22, 1892, an audience of Chicagoans—joined by distinguished guests in town for the World’s Fair Dedication Day exercises—gathered in the Auditorium to hear a concert by the Chicago Orchestra conducted by Theodore Thomas. During the third piece on [...]
Dec. 5-28, 2025: Joffrey Ballet’s “Columbian Nutcracker” (Chicago)
A festive Ferris Wheel, a Dream City, a flurry of snow, dancing dragons, dancing nuts, and dancing rats! It's that time of the year for Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet to stage their spectacular annual production of The Nutcracker, with story set on the fairgrounds of 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Performances run from December 4-28, 2025, at the Lyric Opera House (20 N. Wacker Dr. in Chicago) This ballet by choreographer [...]
Eulogies for George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr.
The death of one of America’s great inventors on November 22, 1896, came as a surprise to many. George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. succumbed to complications due to typhoid fever at the tragically young age of thirty-seven. His eponymous attraction debuted at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and helped lift the Exposition into financial success. Despite the great popularity of his rotating invention, Mr. Ferris died under [...]
Only One Thing in the Whole 1893 Exposition Worth Looking at
A man exploring the 1893 World’s Fair in July conveyed this story about an unimpressed visitor from New York: I met a friend on the plaisance yesterday who has just returned from New York. While there he met a New Yorker, whom he asked if he had visited the fair. The New Yorkers said “Yes, in May. I was roasted brown.” “Didn't you like the exposition?” “Like it? I [...]
Meeting on the Midway Plaisance
On any given day, tens or hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world visited the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. One visitor commented on the strange coincidence of meeting familiar people on the fairgrounds: “Anyone merely passing among the thousands scattered over the Exposition grounds can get no idea of what a big patch of the earth they represent. You cannot guess how many of [...]
Pennies Crushed as Souvenirs of the 1893 World’s Fair
Long before the United States Mint killed the penny on November 12, 2025, the diminutive copper coin was pressed, squashed, and otherwise elongated. Long before. Numismatists hold that the first elongated coins appeared in the United States at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. At an event offering countless souvenirs, these were strange ones. Vendors used mechanical coin-rolling machines to press pennies into an elongated shape while a [...]
Paragon Ragtime Orchestra releases “Meet Me at the Fair!” CD
The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra (PRO) has released a new album of music from great American World’s Fairs, including the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Meet Me at the Fair! (Rialto Records 6008) features nineteen tracks—nearly seventy minutes of exciting music performed by the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra (PRO). Conducted by Rick Benjamin, the PRO features musicians Arthur Moeller (violin), Bernadette Boerckel (soprano), Paul Murphy and Brandon Bergeron (cornets), and the [...]