Dueling Houdini Projects on the Way

If you're not interested in a movie about Harry Houdini and Artur Conan Doyle fighting crime together, maybe you'd prefer an action movie about Houdini's work with the Secret Service.

Summit has hired Noah Oppenheimer to adapt "The Secret Life of Houdini, The Making of America's First Superhero," the 2006 biography by William Kalush and Larry Sloman, reported Heat Vision.

Kalush and Sloman contend that Houdini was a spy for Britain, worked with police and was invited to work as adviser to Czar Nicholas II--so naturally, Summit hopes to turn the story into "an action thriller featuring a character who is part Indiana Jones and part Sherlock Holmes."

Most of Oppenheimer's credits are as a TV producer, but he wrote "Jackie," which was nearly made by Darren Aronofsky and his then main squeeze Rachel Weisz, and the franchise "The Maze Runner," about a group of kids trapped in the midst of a giant labyrinth.

So now "The Secret Life of Houdini" finds itself in a race with "Voices From the Dead," a script by J. Michael Straczynski ("The Changeling"), based on the real-life friendship between Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle. Set in the 1920s, the film follows the duo as the fight crime in new York City alongside a psychic.

We're pulling for "Voices From the Dead," how about you?

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