Hey, so what's Leonardo DiCaprio been up to since The Revenant? Well you don't see him in the Oscar nominees because he hasn't starred in anything over the past year, although he has lined up a few projects here and there. Well now you can add one more interesting one to the pile and it will find him filling the shoes of a real-life gumshoe.
DiCaprio will produce and star in an adaptation of The Black Hand: The Epic War Between A Brilliant Detective And The Deadliest Secret Society In American History, the upcoming book by Stephan Talty. It centers on early 20th-century detective Joseph Petrosino who was one of the first to stand against the New York City mafia. Sounds awesome. Here's the book synopsis:
The gripping true story of the origins of the mafia in America — and the brilliant Italian-born detective who gave his life to stop it
Beginning in the summer of 1903, an insidious crime wave filled New York City, and then the entire country, with fear. The children of Italian immigrants were kidnapped, and dozens of innocent victims were gunned down. Bombs tore apart tenement buildings. Judges, senators, Rockefellers, and society matrons were threatened with gruesome deaths. The perpetrators seemed both omnipresent and invisible. Their only calling card: the symbol of a black hand. The crimes whipped up the slavering tabloid press and heated ethnic tensions to the boiling point. Standing between the American public and the Black Hand’s lawlessness was Joseph Petrosino. Dubbed the “Italian Sherlock Holmes,” he was a famously dogged and ingenious detective, and a master of disguise. As the crimes grew ever more bizarre and the Black Hand’s activities spread far beyond New York’s borders, Petrosino and the all-Italian police squad he assembled raced to capture members of the secret criminal society before the country’s anti-immigrant tremors exploded into catastrophe. Petrosino’s quest to root out the source of the Black Hand’s power would take him all the way to Sicily—but at a terrible cost.
Damn this would be perfect for a DiCaprio/Scorsese reunion, wouldn't it? With no director or writer attached that possibility still exists, so keep those fingers crossed for now.
