Keanu Reeves Takes on Rare TV Role for Historical Series

The next big role for Keanu Reeves won’t be on the big screen. It was announced on Thursday the 57-year-old actor has landed a new lead role on TV. Reeves will star in the new Hulu series Devil in the White City and will be an executive producer alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese. Devil in the White City is based on the book by the same name, written by Erik Lawson. 

Devil in the White City will tell the story of Dr. H.H. Holmes, the serial killer and con artist who created ” Murder Castle” at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. The series will also focus on Daniel H. Burnham, the urban planner and architect who helped develop early skyscrapers. Reeves will portray Burham, but Dicaprio is not expected to make an appearance in the series. According to The Hollywood Reporter, an episode count for Devil in the White City has not been determined. 

Reeve’s TV credits aren’t as long as what he’s done in movies. In the 1980s, the John Wick star appeared in a handful of TV films, and the last TV series he appeared in was Swedish Dicks, a web TV series that aired from 2016 to 2018, and Reeves appeared in 13 episodes of the show. Currently, fans can see Reeves in the new animated film DC League of Super-Pets where he voices Bruce Wayne/Batman. Next year, Reeves will star in the highly anticipated film John Wick: Chapter 4. 

In an interview with Extra, Reeves talked about playing Batman in a live-action movie. “It’s always been a…it’s been a dream,” he said, per HypeBeast.  “[Robert Pattinson’s] got Batman right now, and he’s doing awesome. Maybe down the road. Maybe when they need an older Batman.” 

Along with being the lead in the John Wick franchise, Reeves reprised his role as Ted in Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020), and he returned as Neo in The Matrix Resurrections (2021). In an interview with Empire, the veteran actor talked about how he never thought a fourth Matrix movie was going to happen. 

“I had heard over the years that Warner Bros, who financed and distributed The Matrix trilogy, was considering making another Matrix film, and then I would always go, ‘Well are the Wachowskis involved?’ Reeves stated. “And then it would be, ‘No’, and I would say, ‘Well, that’s never going to happen.’ But then it started to get closer and closer, and I was like, ‘Hmm… still not gonna happen.’ And then a year, a couple, went by. I got a text, a call from Lana Wachowski, and she was saying that she was considering doing another Matrix film. And I was like, ‘Whaaaat?’ And then she said, ‘Yes.’