10 Cloverfield Lane’s Dan Trachtenberg might direct a movie about Houdini

Scripted by Noah Oppenheim, writer of the upcoming Jackie, the still untitled project is an adaption of William Kalush and Larry Sloman’s biography The Secret Life of Houdini (subtitled The Making of America’s First Superhero, because being Houdini is not enough for some people), a book that is somehow both exhaustively researched and specious. (Among other things, it asserts that the famed magician was murdered.)

The film will focus on Houdini’s exploits as an investigator and public debunker of sham spiritualists. It is unlikely to address the fate of the decidedly non-threatening robot that was a major (and deceptive) selling point of The Master Mystery, the first in a cycle of turgid silent serials in which Houdini, for reason, always seemed to play a Treasury agent fighting counterfeiters in a basement.