EXCLUSIVE: A killer role that Leonardo DiCaprio has wanted to play for a long time finally is coming to the forefront after Paramount just closed a splashy deal to acquire the Erik Larson book The Devil In The White City: Murder, Magic And Madness At The Fair That Changed America. There was a big auction that had five studios chasing and three bidding aggressively — Universal and Fox were the others — before Paramount captured a package that has DiCaprio starring and reteaming with his The Wolf Of Wall Street director Martin Scorsese. Billy Ray will write the script. Appian Way’s DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson are producing with Stacey Sher, Scorsese and Emma Tillinger Koskoff. This is a big one for recently minted Paramount Film Group President Marc Evans; it’s expected to be the next collaboration for DiCaprio and Scorsese, who’ve made five films together. 
 
 Between book option and Ray’s writing fees, this is a solid seven figure commitment, and much more when the picture gets made. Paramount’s Elizabeth Raposo will oversee it with Evans. 
 
 DiCaprio will play one of the most prolific serial killers in Chicago history, the 19th century equivalent of Hannibal Lecter. He has wanted this for a long time, but the project’s second wind occurred after Warner Bros let the rights lapse a month ago on the 2003 nonfiction book (Graham Moore was among the writers who did drafts) and came out of conversations with Par’s Brad Grey and Scorsese and Yorn about the studio being at the center of the next DiCaprio-Scorsese teaming; the studio released 2013’s The Wolf Of Wall Street, which got five Oscar nominations. Yorn, DiCaprio and Scorsese went out with a new take on the material from Ray that got everybody excited all over again. The trick with this property has been interlacing the two main characters, the producer/architect of the World’s Fair and the man who works for him and turns out to be a mass murderer. Ray cracked that, and the town flipped for it. 
 
 DiCaprio will play Dr. HH Holmes, a cunning serial killer believed to have murdered anywhere from 27 to 200 people at a time when the city of Chicago was enthralled with hosting the World’s Fair of 1893. Holmes constructed The World’s Fair Hotel, an inn more lethal than the Bates Motel, especially for young single women. The sociopath used charm and guile to lure guests into what became known as a “murder castle,” a haunt that had a gas chamber, crematorium and a dissecting table where Holmes would murder his victims and strip their skeletons to sell for medical and scientific study. 
 
 It’s a departure for DiCaprio to play an unrepentant bad guy, but it goes well into a career full of risk taking that includes The Wolf Of Wall Street with Scorsese (for which both got Oscar nominations), and the upcoming The Revenant, the Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu-directed film for New Regency and Fox. Ray has been working with DiCaprio and Davisson as he wrote the script for The Ballad Of Richard Jewell, the film that will star Jonah Hill. He’s also writing Twilight Zone for Appian Way at Warner Bros. Ray wrote and directed The Secret In Their Eyes, which STX Entertainment releases November 20. 
 
 DiCaprio and Scorsese have made Gangs Of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island and The Wolf Of Wall Street together. LBI reps DiCaprio, Appian Way and Scorsese (who’s also with WME), and CAA, Management 36o and attorney Peter Nichols rep Ray. The author is repped by APA. ||||| Leonardo DiCaprio will star in the long-in-development “The Devil in the White City” with Martin Scorsese directing for Paramount, sources confirm. 
 
 The project, which has been in the works for more than a decade, reunites DiCaprio with Scorsese two years after “The Wolf of Wall Street.” 
 
 Paramount won an auction to buy the movie rights to Erik Larson’s book “The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America.” The studio has previously owned the rights twice. 
 
 Billy Ray, whose credits include “Captain Phillips” and “The Hunger Games,” will write the script. Producers are DiCaprio and his Appian Way partner Jennifer Davisson along with Stacey Sher, Scorsese, Rick Yorn and Emma Koskoff. 
 
 DiCaprio first joined the project in 2010. 
 
 DiCaprio will play H.H. Holmes, who murdered between 27 and 200 people, mostly single young women. Set against the backdrop of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, “The Devil in the White City” tells the intertwining stories of fair architect Daniel H. Burnham and Holmes, who used a hotel he built near the fairgrounds to lure his victims. 
 
 “The Devil in the White City” was first put in development in Hollywood by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner through their Cruise/Wagner banner via the shingle’s deal with Par, but the option lapsed in 2004. Paramount reacquired the film rights in 2007 and set it up with producers Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher, whose shingle Double Feature Films had a first-look deal with the studio at that point. 
 
 Besides “The Wolf of Wall Street,” DiCaprio and Scorsese have made “Gangs of New York,” “The Aviator,” “The Departed” and “Shutter Island” together. 
 
 DiCaprio is repped by LBI, which also reps Scorsese. WME also reps Scorsese CAA and attorney Peter Nichols rep Ray. Larson is repped by APA and David Black Literary Agency. 
 
 Deadline Hollywood first reported the news. ||||| The remains of notorious Chicago serial killer H.H. Holmes are set to be exhumed to try to solve a 120-year-old mystery: Did the "Devil in the White City" fake his own execution? 
 
 History tells us that Holmes — whose macabre murder spree during the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago was detailed in Erik Larson's 2003 best-seller "The Devil in the White City" — was hanged in Philadelphia in 1896 and buried at nearby Holy Cross Cemetery. 
 
 But Holmes, whose birth name was Herman Mudgett, was long rumored to have applied his infamous skills of deceit to his own fate, and one legend has it that he paid off jail guards to hang a cadaver in his place so he could escape to South America. 
 
 Following a request by a descendant of Mudgett, a court in Pennsylvania has issued an order allowing the remains to be unearthed, according to a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, which owns the cemetery. 
 
 The University of Pennsylvania's Department of Anthropology will conduct forensic testing on the remains to see if it is indeed Holmes, a university official said. 
 
 Shortly before Holmes' execution, he confessed to some 27 killings, including the slaying of his own son — purportedly his first victim. 
 
 Though the body count has always been in doubt, the murders he was convicted of were indisputably ghastly. 
 
 "The atrocities of which he was convicted are almost unparalleled in the history of crime — shocking alike for their enormity and the cold-blooded, deliberate way in which they were committed," the Chicago Tribune reported in 1896. "He attributed his natural relish for crime to the fact, as he put it, 'He was born with the devil in him.' " 
 
 The man who became infamous as H.H. Holmes, one of the first serial killers in the United States, preyed mainly on naive and gullible women — young women who wouldn't be missed amid the thousands of World's Fair tourists streaming into Chicago's fashionable Englewood neighborhood in 1893. After arriving in Chicago in the late 1880s, he built what became known as his Murder Castle at 63rd and Wallace streets and proceeded to murder, swindle, lie, steal and cheat, all under the facade of upper-class respectability as the friendly neighborhood druggist and businessman. 
 
 The Tribune also reported that after his execution, Holmes' body was encased in seven barrels of cement, weighing about 3,000 pounds. He had requested that measure to "ensure his body against the vandalism or scientific curiosity of ghouls." 
 
 Holmes, a pharmacist who had studied at the University of Michigan, lived at 63rd and Wallace streets in present-day Englewood. 
 
 As a skilled con artist who pawned off water as medicine, Holmes was suspected of killing several people, sometimes as elaborate scams to collect their life insurance, other times to cover his tracks. 
 
 Some of his victims, many of whom were single women, were slain in what the press dubbed his Murder Castle, a three-story hotel modified with trap doors, hidden passageways and a crematorium. 
 
 Adam Selzer, an amateur historian in Chicago, is among those still trying to separate the fact from the fiction of Holmes' life. Selzer's new book, "H.H. Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil," asserts that the rumor that Holmes faked his own execution is, like much of what has been written about him, absurd. 
 
 Matt Slocum / AP Holy Cross Cemetery is shown behind a locked gate May 3, 2017, in Yeadon, Pa. The body of 19th century serial killer H.H. Holmes is being exhumed from the cemetery at the request of a descendant, who hopes identifying the remains will quell centuries-old rumors that Holmes conned his way out of his execution and escaped from prison. Holy Cross Cemetery is shown behind a locked gate May 3, 2017, in Yeadon, Pa. The body of 19th century serial killer H.H. Holmes is being exhumed from the cemetery at the request of a descendant, who hopes identifying the remains will quell centuries-old rumors that Holmes conned his way out of his execution and escaped from prison. (Matt Slocum / AP) 
 
 Holmes' death was witnessed by about 70 people, including many who knew and didn't like the man, he said. Similarly, despite later pulp writers' wild speculation about how many people Holmes killed, the evidence points to nine or 12 victims, Selzer said. 
 
 Selzer calls Holmes' legend "a new American tall tale," saying he was a con man and "pathological liar" who after getting caught sat "in a prison cell spinning yarns for the press." 
 
 After conducting guided tours about Holmes in Chicago, Selzer said he spent about 10 years doing his own research on the story. 
 
 "I found out how different the real story was from the legend," he said. 
 
 Selzer sees the exhumation as a wild goose chase, saying: "Coffins are like a box of chocolates. You'll never know what you'll find." 
 
 The latest mystery related to Holmes will be featured in an upcoming History channel show, the network confirmed. No air date has been set. 
 
 rmccoppin@chicagotribune.com 
 
 tbriscoe@chicagotribune.com 
 
 Twitter @RobertMcCoppin 
 
 Twitter @_tonybriscoe
– Leonardo DiCaprio will play to his dark side for a new role as "the 19th century equivalent of Hannibal Lecter," reports Deadline. He'll play serial killer HH Holmes in the film adaptation of Erik Larson's 2003 book, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, And Madness At The Fair That Changed America, which will be directed by Martin Scorsese for Paramount. The book follows Holmes' killing of at least 27 people (mainly women) around the time of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago—though he had as many as 200 victims—combined with the story of fair architect Daniel Burnham, Variety reports. The film has been in the works for more than a decade. (Read about a possible "good guy" role for DiCaprio.)