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
July 19-Aug. 4, 2024: “White City Murder” at the Phoenix Theatre (Indianapolis)
Murder! Mischief! Dark Comedy! White City Murder, a macabre and hilarious tale of infamous serial killer H.H. Holmes at the 1893 World’s Fair, is playing at the Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis from July 19 to August 4, 2024. Featuring original music by Ben Asaykwee, the show promises a blend of laughter and chills. In two acts, the play includes over 30 characters, all played by two actors as they [...]
Horace Spencer Fiske’s odes to Daniel Chester French’s Columbian Exposition sculptures
The great sculptural works of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition have been memorialized in photographs, paintings, and prose. Poetry, too, honors some of the famous sculptures from the Fair. Horace Spencer Fiske (1859–1940) taught English at Beloit College and Wisconsin State Normal School before a long career on the faculty and administration of the University of Chicago beginning in 1894. He stablished the John Billings Fiske Prize in Poetry [...]
Eyewitness to the Cold Storage Building fire
Mr. Bryan and Mr. King could not have imaged the infernal tragedy about to unfold at the Columbian Exposition on the afternoon of Monday, July 10, 1893. Thomas Barbour Bryan was a leading figure in the effort to bring the World’s Columbian Exposition to Chicago and had been its First Vice-President. William Fletcher King served as the president of Cornell College from 1863 until 1908. Their conversation was interrupted [...]
“Ring the Bells!” by Richard Lew Dawson
Essayist, story writer, song writer, critic and poet, Richard Lew Dawson (1852–1921) wrote for many popular newspapers and magazines, including the Indianapolis Sentinel, Indianapolis Journal, Chicago Current, Saturday Herald, and Century Magazine. He was a founding member of the Western Association of Writers in 1886. A few years before his death on April 23, 1921, the Hoosier writer moved to San Francisco, where he departed this world on the [...]
“Big Shoulders” comic series plans to visit the 1893 World’s Fair
“A crossroads is where destinies can get made or broken,” states Big Shoulders #1, the first of a proposed six-issue full-color comic series. This Chicago-based fantasy, where the mundane and the cosmic collide, features twenty-two-year-old Coda Walker waking up and finding himself transported to the 1893 World’s Fair. Two pages (not yet colored) from Big Shoulders #1, showing Coda Walker in front of the Administration Building at the [...]
Famous World’s Fair Name on “Jeopardy!”
“Famous Names” served as the Final Jeopardy category on the June 12, 2024, episode of Jeopardy! The answer was: “Vying with Eiffel, this engineer wanted to create big; an admiring account said the Obelisk of Luxor is too short to be a spoke.” Two of the contestants came up with correct question of is “Who is Ferris?” Pittsburgh engineer George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., designed his great iron wheel [...]
165. Picturesque World’s Fair – The Texas Building
THE TEXAS BUILDING.—The Texas Building, a fine structure, was a credit to the patriotism and energy of the ladies of that state and equally a rebuke to the legislature of the great commonwealth which failed to make the needed appropriation in time. It was to the women alone that praise for Texas' representation at the Fair was due. The building occupied a fine site near the northern extremity of [...]
Jul. 9, 2014: “Race-making in the Americas From Columbus to the 1893 World’s Fair” (Chicago)
The Adult Education program at the Newberry Library will offer a course on "Race-making in the Americas: From Columbus to the 1893 World’s Fair" weekly on Tuesdays from July 9–30, 2024. Led by Breanna Escamilla, an anthropologist from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the seminar will begin by analyzing the journal of Christopher Columbus and expand into the archival materials of religious missionaries in the Western Hemisphere, before turning [...]
(Re)Introducing the Dana Palace of Fine Arts
Dear Mr. Burnham, Please take a look at the attached press release drafted by Chief Halsey Ives of the Fine Arts Department. Are we to proceed with this? I urge caution. With concern, Moses P. Handy Publicity and Promotion May 14, 1893 (Re)Introducing the Dana Palace of Fine Arts The World’s Fair is open, the guidebooks are printed, and the maps are distributed. And yet, winds of change are [...]
Aurora Borealis in Alba Urbs
Amid the majesty of night, What splendid vision strikes my eyes, In glory bursting on the sight, Forth from the northern skies? — from “The Aurora Borealis” by Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch