The Hunger Games’ director Gary Ross could be about to make an action thriller based loosely on the life of Harry Houdini…
Having bowed out of the Hunger Games franchise for scheduling reasons, Gary Ross is reportedly in talks to direct a rather different kind of action adventure. This one’s called Houdini, and adapted from a book by William Kalush and Larry Sloman which goes by the considerably longer title, The Secret Life Of Harry Houdini: The Making Of America’s First Superhero.
Just as the recent Sherlock Holmes movies have reinvisioned Conan Doyle’s suave detective as a man of action as well as intellect, Houdini imagines the famous magician and escape artist as an adventurer who’s “part Indiana Jones and Part Sherlock Holmes”. With a script written by Noah Oppenheim, who’s also written the forthcoming WarGames remake, Houdini will introduce a character who, it’s hoped, will be popular enough to trigger a major action series.
With Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter out soon, and The Raven imagining Edgar Alan Poe as a serial killer hunter earlier this year, it seems that Hollywood’s writers are turning increasingly to history for inspiration. We blame Young Einstein.
Slash Film
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