(Photo: Getty Images/WireImage, Tibrina Hobson)

According to Deadline, Leonardo DiCaprio is set to star in and produce an adaptation of Stephan Talty’s book The Black Hand. The story is set in the early 1900s, with the Italian Mafia first making headway in the United States by kidnapping people and leaving ominous ransom notes for their families attributed to “the Black Hand.”


DiCaprio will play NYPD officer Joe Petrosino, a man apparently nicknamed “the Italian Sherlock Holmes,” as he works to expose the dirty dealings of the mob. Unfortunately, at the risk of spoiling history, Petrosino does eventually get killed by so-called Black Hand thugs. So that makes this a crime drama, a period piece, and a thriller where the main character will probably die at the end, all of which are basically DiCaprio’s favorite things to have in a movie.

As Deadline also points out, Talty is the ghostwriter behind A Captain’s Duty, which was adapted into the film Captain Phillips. It’s way too early to say how well The Black Hand will work out, but that’s definitely a good sign.