DiCaprio will play one of the most prolific serial killers in Chicago history, the 19th Century equivalent of Hannibal Lecter. He has wanted this for a long time, but the project’s second wind occurred after Warner Bros let the rights lapse a month ago on the 2003 non-fiction book (Graham Moore was among the writers who did drafts) and came out of conversations with Par’s Brad Grey and Scorsese and Yorn about the studio being at the center of the next DiCaprio-Scorsese teaming, after the studio released The Wolf Of Wall Street and it got five Oscar nominations. Yorn, DiCaprio and Scorsese went out with a new take on the material from Ray that got everybody excited all over again. The trick with this property has been interlacing the two main characters, the producer/architect of the World’s Fair, and the man who works for him and turned out to be a mass murderer. Ray cracked that, and the town flipped for it.

DiCaprio will play Dr. HH Holmes, a cunning serial killer believed to have murdered anywhere from 27 to 200 people at a time when the city of Chicago was enthralled with hosting the World’s Fair of 1893. Holmes constructed The World’s Fair Hotel, an inn more lethal than the Bates Motel, especially for young single women. The sociopath used charm and guile to lure guests into what became known as a “murder castle,” a haunt that had a gas chamber, crematorium and a dissecting table where Holmes would murder his victims and strip their skeletons to sell for medical and scientific study.

It’s a departure for DiCaprio to play an unrepentant bad guy, but it goes well into a career full of risk taking that includesThe Wolf Of Wall Street with Scorsese (for which both got Oscar nominations), and the upcoming The Revenant, the Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu-directed film for New Regency and Fox. Ray has been working with DiCaprio and Davisson as he wrote the script for The Ballad Of Richard Jewell, the film that will star Jonah Hill. He’s also writing Twilight Zone for Appian Way at Warner Bros. Ray wrote and directed The Secret In Their Eyes, which STX Entertainment releases November 20.

DiCaprio and Scorsese have made Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island and The Wolf Of Wall Street together. LBI reps DiCaprio, Scorsese and Appian Way, and CAA, Management 36o and attorney Peter Nichols rep Ray.

Got the drop on Deadline . . .