Much like the master illusionist on which the feature film is based, Lionsgate’s Harry Houdini movie has been a difficult butterfly to pin. Through time, we’ve seen the likes of Johnny Depp and director Dean Parisot come attached to the project, only for plans to unravel before any tangible progress could be made.
But the show must go on, with Deadline reporting that Dan Trachtenberg has entered talks to helm the Houdini pic, one to be based on The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero by William Kalush and Larry Sloman. Little is known about the embryonic feature, only that it holds a script from Noah Oppenheim and will seemingly shed new light on the elusive Harry Houdini, who was described as “not just the master of magic, but as an adventurer and investigator of the occult.” Frank Marshall and Bruce Cohen (American Beauty) will produce.
It’s been a fairly busy year for Dan Trachtenberg, who engineered arguably one of 2016’s breakout hits in 10 Cloverfield Lane, before tapping into our most primitive fears of virtual reality in the “Playtest” episode of Black Mirror season 3. As far as we can tell, the writer-director has no active projects in the pipeline, aside from possibly penning the script for Valve’s live-action Portal movie. Expect an announcement for that one very soon, according to J.J. Abrams, who could well reunite with Trachtenberg for the video game movie, considering the latter helmed the buzzworthy short, Portal: No Escape, five years ago.
We’ll be bringing you all the latest on Lionsgate’s Harry Houdini movie as more information comes to light, so be sure to stay tuned.
