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Leonardo DiCaprio will play a 19th century serial killer in The Devil in the White City

Leonardo DiCaprio will play a 19th century serial killer in The Devil in the White City

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It'll be his sixth movie with Martin Scorsese since 2002

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Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese have become one of the most prolific and feted actor-director duos in film history, and they've just agreed to film their sixth collaboration. The pair are going to adapt Erik Larson's 2003 nonfiction book The Devil in the White City for the big screen. The book follows the work of Daniel Burnham, the architect who designed Chicago's 1893 World's Fair, and Dr. H.H. Holmes, a serial killer who lured his victims to their deaths using the fair as cover. DiCaprio is going to play Holmes, his latest in a string of villainous roles — or morally ambiguous, at the very least — that began with 2012's Django Unchained. Billy Ray, a screenwriter with credits like The Hunger Games and Captain Phillips to his name, is signed on to write.

DiCaprio and Scorsese last worked together on 2013's The Wolf of Wall Street, but their working relationship now stretches over more than a decade. Between Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island, and Wolf, the pair have earned 31 Academy Award nominations for their work, including two nominations for DiCaprio's acting work and four nods (and one win) for Scorsese's direction. DiCaprio purchased the rights to adapt The Devil in the White City back in 2010, so getting the chance to bring it to life means realizing a long-held idea. Consequence of Sound notes that the project was once attached to the actor-director pair of Tom Cruise and Kathryn Bigelow, which would've made for a fascinating film.