Keanu Reeves is the latest Hollywood star to make a belated jump to television and he could not have picked a more exciting project to start with. He is in talks to star in The Devil in the White City, a long-gestating series with Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese as producers, reports Deadline. The project is now at Hulu and is an adaptation of Erik Larson’s 2003 book of the same name.
The Devil in the White City is a true story about architect Daniel H. Burnham and doctor Henry H. Holmes and is set during the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Burnham dreamed of making a major impact on the world while Holmes built a “Murder Castle” during the fair to seduce and murder young women. It’s not clear which part Reeves will play and no other casting was reported. It’s possible Reeves, 57, will star as Burnham since Holmes was executed at age 34 in 1896.
Videos by PopCulture.com
DiCaprio has been trying to bring Larson’s book to the screen since 2010 when he bought the rights to make a film. That year, it was set up at Paramount Pictures with Scorsese directing. In 2019, the project was revived at Hulu, with DiCaprio and Scorsese still attached as executive producers. Paramount Television Studios is producing with ABC Signature and DiCaprio’s Appian Way. Other executive producers on the project are Sam Shaw, Rick Yorn, Jennifer Davisson and Stacey Sher. Todd Field (In the Bedroom, Little Children) was hired to direct the first two episodes.
In April 2020, Sher told Deadline the project was still in the works and that Sam Shaw (Castle Rock) was hired to write. “I’m really excited about it and I hope we’re going to make it. Sam Shaw has done a remarkable job crafting it,” Sher said at the time. “In that case, the challenges were how do you get it down to two hours, so many enormously talented people have attempted to do that. We’re still in development and hopefully getting ready to get out of it soon.”
Reeves can now be seen in theaters in the fourth Matrix movie, The Matrix Resurrections. He is also working on two more John Wick movies, the first of which is set to hit theaters on March 24, 2023. In 2020, he starred in Bill & Ted Face the Music and The Spongebob Movie: Sponge on the Run. His only TV credits include the 1990 Bill & Ted animated series and a supporting role in the 2016-2018 American-Swedish sitcom Swedish Dicks.
