Although The Hunger Games director Gary Ross was said to be in talks to direct the film earlier this year, The LA Times is now reporting that Joe Wright (Anna Karenina, Hanna) may instead helm Lionsgate’s Houdini.
Based on the biography, “The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero,” by William Kalush and Larry Sloman, the project also previously had Jeff Nathanson attached to direct.
The comprehensive book, published in 2006 by Atria Books, became known for insinuating that Harry Houdini acted as a spy for Britain and was asked to be an adviser to Czar Nicholas II’s court in pre-revolutionary Russia. The book also portrayed the master escape artist and magician as a debunker of con artists who pretended to be spiritualists, leading to the controversial theory that Houdini’s death was caused by the spiritual movement as payback.
