Keanu Reeves to lead Hulu’s adaptation of Devil In The White City
Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese have signed onto the project as producers, with Todd Field directing
Aux News Keanu Reeves
After eight months of speculation, Keanu Reeves will officially star in the Hulu series adaptation of Erik Larson’s Devil In The White City—and no, he’s not playing the twisted serial killer, but the architect of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, Daniel H. Burnham. The series marks Reeves first lead television role in the U.S. since the short-lived 1990 animated series Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures.
The project has been in development for over a decade, starting when Leonardo DiCaprio picked up the rights to the property back in 2010. Martin Scorsese was originally slated to direct a feature film adaptation with DiCaprio seated in the lead role. In 2019, it was announced the two would work as producers on the Reeves vehicle. Castle Rock’s Sam Shaw is on board as writer, showrunner, and exec producer, with Todd Field (TÁR, Little Children) directing.
Larson’s best-selling work weaves Burnham’s ambitious fair planning with the unseemly tale of America’s first modern serial killer, Dr. H. H. Holmes. The novel follows Burnham as he races to conceptualize and build out the massive World’s Fair, all the while Holmes lures unknowing victims back his notorious “Murder Castle.” The notorious killer seduced, trapped, and tortured young women within the confines of his castle, casting a shadow over Burnham’s festivities. Who’s taking on the role of Holmes has yet to be announced.
Reeves most recent TV stint was for the comedy series Swedish Dicks (which aired in Sweden), which only marked Reeves’ second lead television role. Other than that, you know him as the wicked cool actor from films such as The Matrix, The Matrix: Reloaded, The Matrix: Revolutions, The Matrix: Resurrections, John Wick, Speed, and Point Break.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, The Devil In The White City is slated for a 2024 premiere, with production commencing next year.
59 Comments
You mean that guy who played the charming doctor in Something’s Gotta Give?
Ugh I used to be excited for this project, but then I did research into the real HH Holmes and yeah no. Important to note Devil in the White City is a novel and not historical, the real Holmes actually never operated the Murder Castle. It was never officially opened, it was an extension of his true self, which was fraud. He was indeed a serial killer but financial crime was his main vice, he just was willing to kill people in the name of fraud if need be. He killed at least 9 people, Holmes claimed dozens and the newspapers said hundreds, but again he was a pathological liar and a fraud, can’t trust that. And on the subject of first modern serial killer, well define modern. Serial killers in America far as records go, can be traced to the Harpe Brothers of the late 18th century, and for contemporaries of Holmes you had people like The Servant Girl Annhilator, Jane Toppan, the Bender Family and Belle Gunness operating in the years before or concurrent to Holmes.
Uhh, Devil in the White City is not a novel. It is a factual history of the World’s Fair and HH Holmes.
Yeah … that book is meticulously researched. I now know more about 19th century stairway ballisters than I ever thought I would need to know.
Crossbows designed for use on stairways? Now there’s a niche product I wouldn’t have thought of.
Right!
Not factual on HH Holmes that’s for sure. Larsons not a historian and while he more or less gets the entire Worlds Fair correct, his grasp is very slippery on Holmes and much of his recent popularity is because of the book.
It depends on what you mean by a “historian”. Yes, he’s not a history professor at a university, but then again most authors of books on history aren’t (and most of the books written by ones that are, are nigh unreadable by the general public). Yes, I know that other people who have written about Holmes like Adam Seltzer disagree with many of Larson’s interpretations, but it’s not like Seltzer has any more authority than Larson. The problem is that Holmes is poorly documented historically and many of the newspaper articles about him at the time weren’t exactly sterling representations of journalism at its finest.
I have read the Seltzer book and he makes a far more convincing argument then Larson. The problem is yes there’s a lot of lies and lack of information in Holmes story, but in the history field that means you need to be even more skeptical, plus Occams razor, what’s more likely. A man built a hotel and murdered hundreds of people with gas chambers and other devices not out of place in a concentration camp? Or, a habitual liar on deaths row made up lies to make himself seem more grand and yellow journalists like Hearst bought it? On the subject of journalists as historians, it varies heavily. Robert Caro is not a historian but nobody is going to say his Johnson books aren’t the best historical books on that subject. On the other hand, many pirate historicans have a lot of problems with journalist Colin Woodards book Republic of Pirates. Larson I’d put squarely in between a hack like Woodard, and someone like Caro. Its not a bad book Devil in the White City, it’s not even just about Holmes, but that’s what everyone knows the book for and that’s a problem.
Than*.
Larson sure writes a lot of history books for a guy who isn’t a “historian”. His books are very well researched. He does allow himself a bit of speculation regarding HH Holmes, but tenured history profs have been known to do the same thing. His footnotes in the book are very extensive, and in the cases in which he is making an educated guess about what happened because of a lack of hard evidence, he is clear about that. The book is proper history, and is certainly not a novel.
Look maybe I’m being too harsh when I say novel, but that’s not the important issue, its the fact when anyone brings up HH Holmes they are almost certainly thinking of the creature Larson wrote about and not the real person who was less possessed by the Devil as Holmes said himself, and more a fraud with even less of a soul.
What are you even talking about? “Recent” popularity? Devil in the White City is almost 20 years old, and Larson has written four other books since then, and had a successful career before that. I think we can safely say he’s not a flash in the pan.
Im not saying Larson is talentless, and I’ll be honest I have this bad habit of saying something is recent but isn’t, historians sometimes do that a lot appologies. But let me ask you, did you hear of HH Holmes prior to 2003? Odds are you probably didn’t, its possible since major books on him started around 1994, but he didn’t reach this mainstream popularity until Devil in the White City
I’m probably not the best sample audience for that question, being as I live in Chicago and have had interest in creepy stuff since I was a kid.
Fair, that’s completely fair. Someone into to the macabre and living in Chicago probably would know of HH Holmes more likely then that. Far before he went mainstream.
Even Wikipedia has enough qualifiers around Holmes and his “Murder Castle” to indicate that the story told in Devil in the White City is pulled from some of the more sensationalist sources.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._H._Holmes
duplicate comment
Thanks!
And what makes defining serial killers tricky, is they have subcategories. When most people think of serial killers, they’re really thinking of the subset that derive sadistic pleasure from the act of killing – your John Wayne Gacy’s, Ted Bundy’s etc. And in that regard, one could argue Jack the Ripper is the first.
But then you have others who are serial killing for other reasons like financial gain (Burke and Hair, Marry Ann Cotton), or they’re mission driven, and it’s hard to declare one the “first.”
Naaaah Ripper isn’t remotely first. Elizabeth Bathory in the 1600s tortured little girls for the fun of it, financial crime wise Marie Madeline De Aubry in the court of Louis XIV killed most of her family for profit. Peter Stumpp in the Holy Roman Empire was accused of being a werewolf but it seems he just killed his entire family in a rage. There’s even stories of poison rings in the Roman Republic era and of murderous Han Chinese princes. The person I tend to settle on as “first recorded plausible” serial killer is Dame Alice Kyteler of Ireland in the 13th century. Arsenic to poison husbands for profit, accused of witchcraft ironically. My definition is the broad kills 3 people over a set period of time.
The key word is first “Modern” serial killer. I feel like the rich and noble killing peasants in the 16th century feels different then Jack the Ripper killing on the streets of foggy old London town(even if he was most likely also rich and possible a noble). Then again that is just semantics really.
Its all a superlative. Elizabeth Bathory is admittedly very much of her era, although people like Delphine LeLaurie acted a hell of a lot like her in 1830s New Orleans so maybe not that old fashion. But what is modern about the Ripper murders beyond the sensational worldwide coverage? At the same time, there was another serial killer, the Themes Torso Killer, and in another part of London was Amelia Dyer who actually probably did kill hundreds of children as a baby farmer from the 1870s until the 1890s. Someone like Elizabeth Ridgeway might have been from the 1600s era England but her MO of poisoning people is almost the same as Mary Ann Cotton, executed in the 1870s. Burke and Hare killed people in the 1810s, but the murders they did aren’t too different from the Hillside Stanglers a century later. I guess what I’m saying is, modern is relative when the crimes so similar to criminals from long before, and there were so many active serial killers in the 19th century alone that giving one the title of first anything is difficult at best and impossible at worst.
You have an interesting hobby…..
I wrote my thesis paper on the history of serial killers. I actually don’t much care for the true crime genre as I find it demeaning to the victims and I think the best book on serial killers for the last couple of years was Hallie Rubenholds The Five.
Don’t take this the wrong way but… you’re almost coming off as an HH Holmes apologist? And that’s just not what I expected to find in this comments section, not gonna lie.
I am not an apologist for HH Holmes. Far from it, I’m glad he got caught, wished it was sooner, and frankly I don’t feel bad that his hanging got botched. My issue is how some people view him as a real life Jigsaw, some criminal mastermind who killed hundreds. He killed at most 9, three of them children via a cars cas exhaust. He loved the attention, he craved it when he got killed. Most of the lies about Holmes comes from his mouth, claiming to be possessed by the devil, owning a murder castle, all that crap. He isn’t special, he’s just a loathsome fraudsters who’d gladly kill someone to make a buck. My issues with making Holmes seem grand is the same as people beliving Jack the Ripper was clever for not being caught. People give serial killers too much credit. I’d prefer more attention to the victims. My heart is with Benjamin Preziel and Polly Nichols, not William Mudster Midgitt and Jack the Ripper.
I don’t think at the time they had all the info on HH Holmes. That book was written a long time ago. I also don’t think anyone knows the accurate truth of the matter.
It was around 2003, books on him in detail didn’t begin until 1994 with Harold Schrecters book. I’ll grant you that not everything we know now was available in 2003, but far as I’m aware Larson has never admitted any fault in research. Schrecter by contrast has admitted his research was deeply flawed. And for the record, this isn’t a debated topic among crime historians. For godsake, Holmes claimed to have murdered people who were later found out to be 100 percent alive. He was only ever tried for a handful of victims because there wasn’t any evidence to the contrary. The whole myth of the Murder Castle wasn’t claimed during the trial either and began shortly before his execution. There’s details nobody will ever know, but there’s more then enough available to call out a vane narcissistic serial killer on his lies.
Well, thanks for the history lesson I guess. Still loved the book. That Worlds Fair opened on time (loved the construction details) and made a profit in a recession…..
Im not saying you can’t love the book. There’s aspects of it I quite like such as the minor details of the World’s Fair. Its a shame the book its known for the actual Worlds Fair parts.
What would an “official opening” of a murder castle hotel look like? Would there be a ribbon cutting with local dignitaries? Special rate on getting murdered for the first month?
All very good questions. With how grand the Worlds Fair was, perhaps like electricity, it could have been a “you can be the first person on your block to get murdered!” Kind of deal. I’ll give the newspaper writers at least some credit for thinking up one hell of a story alongside Holmes for lying. Its easy to say something stabbed you to death in a hotel, less so when you claim the room was a hidden gas chamber had hidden passageways, trap doors and a crematorium.
BABA BOOEY
“Castle on high”? Wasn’t it a rather normal-looking office/residential building right downtown? Also he didn’t use it to “seduce, trap, and torture young woman” he killed people of both sexes and a lot of them were employees of his pharmacy.
Keanu Reeves? Star of Tune in Tomorrow?!?
The fact Keanu Reeves is getting any work after Thumbsucker still boggles my mind.
Don’t you talk about Johnny Utah that way!Plus haven’t you experienced his Louisiana accent in Devil’s Advocate? That was 8 years before Thumbsucker, and people actually saw it.(I kid, I kid – Keanu if you read this, love you man!)
Okay, first off, I will talk about Shane Falco any way I gat damn please!
Second, he was from Florida, not Louisiana, not that it matters because that accent was pure Car-Mart of Phenix City, AL lube tech.
Also, Thumbsucker should have killed everyone attached to that project’s careers dead like a can of Raid. D’Onofrio, Swinton, Reeves, Bratt? They ALL owe me an apology. The key grip, the guy who edited the soundtrack, the PAs….?
Except Phenix City is in Alabama! Ha! Who’s apologizing now??
If you think I’m ever going to apologize to Phenix City, Alabama, hold that breath and I’ll call the ambulance to come get you.
Hmm. Eufala?
Nah, kid from there stole my girl in the Corps.
Guess they owe you an apology…
Fun fact, I’m pretty sure that’s actually meant to be a Florida accent in Devil’s Advocate. He starts out the movie defending a client in Gainsville, I believe.
Ha, I’m going to have to take everyone’s word for it since I watched that movie once about 20 years ago and have never felt the need to revisit it. His pronunciation of “you need representation!” when talking to Craig T Nelson is permanently lodged in my brain, though.
I loved that movie! I still think it was one of his best.
Not for everyone, apparently.
You, the people at Cannes, and 5 other people. That’s it. Start a support group. =P
I’m okay standing with the people from Cannes…
It’s been 16 years since Field’s last theatrical release. So perhaps we can expect this in 2038.
So which Muppet is going to play Holmes? I’m betting on Rowlf.
Obvious choice Uncle Deadly.
So we’re never getting Constantine 2, are we?
That makes me cry to this day.My fav Keanu film after the John Wick ones.
That was a great book! Hope they get it right…..
HH Holmes was the least interesting part of that book. Honestly, I hope he’s sidelined.
I am not sure about this one. I liked the book and Keanu seems like a good guy. But on the other hand the last time I saw him in a movie that took place in the 1890’s (Dracula) he wasn’t so good. Hope is old timey Chicago accent is better than his old timey British accent.
Keanu Reeves seems like a lovely person, but he can’t act. His casting is disappointing news for a project I otherwise would have been very interested in. Maybe Scorsese, in his exec producer role, is going the Francis Ford Coppola route and casting Reeves to bring in a larger audience. How did that work out for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Marty?
Fun Fact: Walt Disney based the Magic Kingdom’s Cinderella Castle on HH Holmes’s Murder Castle.