Somehow there are two Harry Houdini-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle buddy-cop projects in the works

By Sean O'Neal | February 11, 2011 | 5:37pm

Aux Features Film

The recent obsession with taking literary and historical figures and turning them into super-sleuths continues, with not one but two projects based on the idea of real-life pals Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle playing buddy cops and chasing mysteries in 1920s New York. DreamWorks recently acquired Voices From The Dead, a feature film script about the magician and the mystery author collaborating with a psychic to solve a string of murders; today it was revealed that SyFy, reportedly unaware of that film, has also been pursuing the drama series Among The Spirits (based on the graphic novel of the same name), described as a “turn-of-the-century Fringe” that finds Houdini and Doyle investigating crimes with the help of a lady cop and Wild Wild West-style steampunk technology.

Undeterred by the competition, both projects are currently in development, joining other forthcoming mash-ups like the one where Abraham Lincoln hunts vampires, Bram Stoker’s Jonathan Harker investigates the supernatural in Scotland Yard, and Edgar Allan Poe moonlights as a private detective—with the latter concept similarly so compelling, it's expected to sustain both an ABC series and a movie with John Cusack. So if anyone has a script where Charles Dickens is also a vigilante ninja, now’s the time to polish it.