Gary Ross in talks to direct Harry Houdini biopic

Gary Ross became the talk of Hollywood when he walked away from the hottest project in years: the Hunger Games sequel Catching Fire . Now, it seems, we know what the director had up his sleeve: a biopic of the escape artist Harry Houdini . Ross, whose Hunger Games has to date made more than $602m (£372m) at the global box office is in talks to direct an adaptation of The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero by William Kalush and Larry Sloman, which asserts that Houdini was recruited as an agent by British and US intelligence services. The Hungarian-born Houdini, who died in 1926, supposedly after being punched in the stomach by a student keen to test the escapologist's muscles, has been the subject of a number of biopics and character appearances, most recently in the 2007 film Death Defying Acts , in which Guy Pearce played him. Ross bowed out of Catching Fire, citing the time pressure the producing studio was putting him under. He was replaced with Francis Lawrence, who directed Water for Elephants .