Yahoo News Leonardo DiCaprio to play 'Italian Sherlock Holmes'
Elementare, mio caro Watson - Leonardo DiCaprio is going to be playing the 'Italian Sherlock Holmes'. Sort of.
The Oscar-winning actor will also produce the adaptation of Stephan Talty's book The Black Hand, according to Deadline.
The story follows Joe Petrosino (aka the 'Italian Sherlock Holmes'), an NYPD detective who goes after the Black Hand gang in early 1900s America.
Talty is a New York Times bestselling author and has penned works including Hangman, Black Irish and Agent Garbo.
The book's synopsis reads: "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."
The Paramount Pictures film will be produced by Ellen Goldsmith-Vein and Jeremy Bell from The Gotham Group, alongside DiCaprio's producing partner Jennifer Davisson, and Nathaniel Posey from Appian Way Productions.
Leonardo DiCaprio was last seen in The Revenant, for which he finally won the Oscar for Best Actor.
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