Tom Holland’s latest project The Crowded Room is coming soon to Apple TV Plus and one thing’s for sure, Holland looks set to give one of the best performances of his career. The limited series is based on the 1981 nonfiction book The Minds of Billy Milligan by Daniel Keyes, and despite some early negative reviews of the series, Holland’s portrayal of the troubled Danny Sullivan is getting praised.
The book is based off of the 1977 court case involving the real Milligan, who was being charged with multiple felonies, including armed robbery and rape. Milligan, who had been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, and his lawyers claimed the crimes had not been committed by Milligan, but by two of his alternate personalities, a man named Ragen Vadascovinich, and a woman named Adalana. They pled not guilty by reason of insanity as Milligan’s defense, and he was then committed to a psychiatric hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
Dissociative identity disorder has been used in media before, which begs the question: is The Crowded Room a remake?
The Crowded Room is not a remake, but it’s complicated
The answer’s a little complicated; the Apple TV Plus series is not a direct remake, but it is one of several projects to take use Keyes’ book as a source of inspiration. A movie adaptation of The Minds of Billy Milligan, also called The Crowded Room, was announced in 2015, with Leonardo DiCaprio attached to play Billy. An exclusive from The Hollywood Reporter revealed that DiCaprio had been pursuing the role for nearly two decades, and that the film was to be made with the same production company that had made The Revenant, New Regency. With DiCaprio in the lead role and directors like James Cameron attached at one point, The Crowded Room had everything it needed to be a blockbuster and critical darling, but it sadly never came to be (you and I both know DiCaprio would have aced all of Billy’s 24 different personalities). While the Apple TV Plus series shares the same name, it won’t be about Billy, but instead about the similarly-named Danny Sullivan, who is being investigated for different crimes.
It’s not the only project to take inspiration from Keyes’ book; the M. Night Shyamalan film Split follows a main character with dissociative identity disorder, with a similar amount of alternate personalities and way of speaking as Billy. Additionally, a four-part Netflix documentary titled, Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan, was released in 2021.
Billy’s story has fascinated people for years, but The Crowded Room won’t be the project that depicts that story. The Crowded Room comes to Apple TV Plus Friday, June 9.