Summit to Expose Houdini’s Secret Life

That Harry Houdini. He was quite the character. Or at least, according to the biography of the fame magician by William Kalush and Larry Sloman, titled “The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero”. Summit Entertainment, the folks behind the “Twilight” movies, liked the theories posited in the book so much that they are planning to adapt it into a movie with an eye towards franchising the character, ala what Guy Ritchie is doing with his version of Sherlock Holmes. To that end, Summit has tapped scribe Jeff Nathanson (the “Rush Hour” movies) to write and direct the adaptation.

According to THR, the bio, whch was published in 2006 by Atria Books, counts among some of its claims that Houdini was a spy for Britain, and at one point was asked to be an adviser to Czar Nicholas II’s court in pre-revolutionary Russia. And as with the 2007 movie “Death Defying Acts”, the book also delves into Houdini’s skills as a debunker of con artists who pretended to be spiritualists, leading to one theory that his death was at the hands of the people he was exposing.

Besides the “Rush Hour” movies for Brett Rather, Nathanson also contributed to a trio of Steven Spielberg movies, including “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, “Catch Me If You Can”, and “The Terminal.

Below: “Ahem. Eyes up here.”