Leslie Odom Jr. is stepping into new creative territory and straight into the shadows of one of Hollywood’s strangest true stories.
The Tony and Oscar-nominated star is set to write and headline a new horror film based on Rolling Stone’s August 2024 investigative feature, Dance With the Devil, which unpacked Sammy Davis Jr.’s unexpected and long-rumored connection to Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan.
The film marks Odom’s feature writing debut and will be produced in partnership with Rolling Stone Films after a competitive bidding war for screen rights.
At the center of the story is a question that has fascinated pop-culture historians for years: How did one of America’s most beloved entertainers, a Rat Pack icon, civil rights advocate, and boundary-breaking performer, find himself entangled with one of the country’s most controversial counterculture figures?
According to the project’s logline, the film explores “how a TV pilot called Poor Devil begat a friendship between Sammy Davis Jr. and Anton Szandor LaVey, founder and high priest of the Church of Satan.”
The adaptation pulls from Rolling Stone journalist Alex Bhattacharji’s deeply reported article, which, despite its sensational premise, is ultimately a human story. Bhattacharji described the piece as “a sensitive story about a profoundly alienated Davis and his search for acceptance.”
Behind the entertainment headlines, the original reporting revealed a complicated intersection of identity, belonging, and performance.
“It’s a rollicking ride that touches on complex, timely issues: racial and sexual identity, politics, religion, pop culture, and the counter-culture,” Bhattacharji shared in a statement.
The adaptation promises more than jump scares. It’s the kind of psychological, culturally layered horror that interrogates real-life tensions, the pressures of fame, the duality of public life vs. inner life, the search for belonging, and the seductive pull of alternative belief systems.
No casting or production timeline has been announced yet.
Photo Credit: DepositPhotos.com
