Harry Houdini Movie In Development At Paramount
A film about the legendary escape artist and illusionist Harry Houdini is in development at Paramount, courtesy of Transformers producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Mark Vahradian. Houdini is one of the world's most famous magicians, notable for his death-defying escape acts, having escaped from being buried alive, and from a locked water tank while chained and straightjacketed, just to name a few. While Houdini has appeared as a character in films before, most recently played by Guy Pearce in the romantic melodrama Death Defying Acts, a big-screen biopic has yet to be made about his life.
Deadline reports the script will be from Neil Weidener and Gavin James, who've been tapped to bring the live-actionBeyblade movie to life, also for Paramount. Specific plot details are unknown for the Houdini project, but it will be set "in the early 20th century and have a Sherlock Holmes tone, dealing as it does with a human superhero type." Given this is coming from the producers of the Transformers films, this will likely be closer in tone to the Robert Downey Jr. iteration of Sherlock Holmes than the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle original, although Doyle and Houdini were friends in real life.
Related: Houdini And Doyle Combines An Unlikely Real-Life Friendship With The X-Files
Previously, a long-gestating Harry Houdini film starring Ben Affleck had been in the works at Disney, but there's no word on whether that's still moving forward. A small screen, two-part biopic had also previously been made for the History Channel in 2014 starring Adrien Brody as the illusionist. No matter what the film focuses on, Houdini had a rich and storied life, from his upbringing as a poor Hungarian-American immigrant (born Erik Weisz), to his love of
Read more on screenrant.com
