Leonardo DiCaprio looks set to play a 19th-century serial killer who lured his victims into a "murder castle" containing a gas chamber, crematorium and dissecting table.

DiCaprio has picked up the rights to Erik Larson's 2003 non-fiction book The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, which retold the story of mass murderer Dr HH Holmes. Holmes was a hotelier who is believed to have slaughtered anywhere from 27 to 200 people, mainly young single women who were lured to his World's Fair Hotel in Chicago through the killer's charm and guile.

A genuine doctor – he graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1884 – Holmes was fascinated with corpses and skeletons. He preyed on his employees, lovers and hotel guests, often gassing them in their soundproofed rooms and transporting them by secret chute to the basement, where he had two giant furnaces, several pits of acid and even a stretching rack. Holmes would often dissect his victims and sell the remains for medical research, using the contacts he had made during his period of study.

DiCaprio's production partner, Jennifer Killoran of the Oscar-nominated actor's Appian Way production company, said Larson's book was "truly a one-of-its-kind American story about our nation's first serial killer. We're excited to bring it to the big screen." Fellow producers Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher added: "This is a big, entertaining thriller in an incredible setting that will appeal to a worldwide audience."

The HH Holmes story has long been considered fertile ground in Hollywood. Tom Cruise optioned Larson's book in 2003 with the aim of playing the murderer, but DiCaprio swiftly set up a rival project, intending to rely on public domain evidence about Holmes' killing spree. Neither film came to fruition, but it now looks like DiCaprio will get to bring this particular doctor of death to life.