It’s no secret that true-crime stories and high-profile celebrities have been a boon to Netflix; just look at viral docuseries like Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes and Abducted in Plain Sight, as well as instant-hit films like the Sandra Bullock vehicle Bird Box. It’s a pretty easy model to understand: people like lurid stories and movie stars. Which is precisely why Martin Scorsese’s upcoming TV adaptation of The Devil in the White City, with Leonardo DiCaprio also on board to executive produce, seems like an almost guaranteed winner. But the series won’t debut on Netflix, or even HBO, which has also leaned into some impressive feats of casting on series including Big Little Lies and Sharp Objects. Instead, The Devil in the White City will live on Hulu—making it the streamer’s most impressive get since The Handmaid’s Tale.
As of August, DiCaprio was set to star in the project as well—but now his involvement has shifted to solely executive producing the series alongside Scorsese as they adapt Erik Larson’s nonfiction book The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America. On the same afternoon that Hulu announced the news at T.C.A., the streamer also dropped a trailer for its upcoming Catch-22 adaptation, which stars George Clooney. So despite DiCaprio’s movement to behind the camera on this project, Hulu’s message seems pretty clear: Hulu can play the star-power game, too.
Larson’s book documented the lives of an architect and a serial killer, whose fates became intertwined at Chicago’s World’s Fair in 1893. The architect, Daniel H. Burnham, oversaw the design and construction of the fair; the serial killer, Henry H. Holmes, is perhaps best known for his “Murder Castle,” constructed near the fairgrounds. Holmes remains one of the United States’ most infamous and prolific serial murderers—and while he’s certainly received the documentary treatment before (American Horror Story fans might recall that Season 5, Hotel, was loosely based on Holmes), the true-crime immersed TV landscape does make the story seem ripe for a retread.
As Variety notes, this project has been in the works for quite some time. DiCaprio first acquired the rights almost a decade ago, and intended to adapt it into a film; Scorsese signed on to direct in 2015, after the project’s first stab at development lapsed in 2004. Paramount reacquired the film rights three years later, Variety reports. Now, the project has become a series—understandably, given the success of other murder-based TV shows, both fictional and nonfictional.
Scorsese and DiCaprio, of course, go way back as well. And given their previous collaborations—The Wolf of Wall Street, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island—fans should have no doubt that the duo can pull off some raucous, dark material. But the added wrinkle in all of this is Holmes’s complicated legacy; there are a lot of holes in the stories that have been told about him, which were published at the height of yellow journalism. Even the accuracy of Holmes’s death count is hard to pin down; popular lore places it in the hundreds, while Holmes himself confessed to killing 27 people, despite law enforcement’s suspicion the number was closer to nine. At least one of his alleged victims was even found to be alive. In the end, Holmes himself recanted his confession, claiming to have only killed two people by accident.
These discrepancies could prove interesting for Scorsese, DiCaprio, and their team—especially as viewers continue to grapple with the implications of true crime’s enduring popularity. The myths surrounding serial killers can often overtake the realities of the people themselves, and the facts of their lives—and Holmes’s story is one of the most confusing of them all. Above all, however, let’s just hope this series doesn’t spark yet another debate regarding the relative hotness of a serial killer.
This post has been corrected to clarify Leonardo DiCaprio’s involvement as an executive producer.
— The worst-kept secret of Trump’s presidency
— Is Silicon Valley suffocating the media? Jill Abramson weighs in
— Bernie Sanders’s plan to eat the rich
— The 25 most influential movie scenes of the past 25 years
— Broad City and the pivot to millennial rage
Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hollywood newsletter and never miss a story.