Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is the veteran film maker’s next picture,
following the release of The Irishman in 2019.
At the age of 78, Scorsese is showing no signs of slowing down as his new movie is set to be just
as ambitious as his previous. Scorsese has incredibly made 25 feature length narrative films,
in addition to 16 feature length documentaries, working on TV series, shorts and music videos.
Killers of the Flower Moon will be Scorsese’s second foray into the world of streaming services,
as the movie marks his first collaboration with Apple Films,
with the film set to have a theatrical cinematic release, courtesy of Paramount
Pictures, and it will then find its home on Apple’s streaming platform, Apple TV +.
Here are 7 you should know about Killers of the Flower Moon
1- The story. Scorsese’s film is based on journalist David Grann’s nonfiction book of
the same name, published in 2017. A true story, Killers of the Flower Moon investigates a series
of murders that plagued the native American Osage tribe in Oklahoma during the 1920s
after valuable oil was discovered on their land, oil which made the Osage people the richest in the
world per capita. The new found wealth attracted the attention of people with nefarious intentions,
and the string of murders was eventually investigated by what would later ne known
as the federal bureau of investigations, the fbi, in one of their first ever cases,
after local law enforcement proved helpless in catching the perpetrators. What they discovered
was a conspiracy that shook the land to its very core.
2- The cast. Killers of the Flower Moon will be the first every feature length film to star both
Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. All three appeared as fictionalised versions of themselves
in the Scorsese directed The Audition, but neither actor has worked on a feature length
movie with Scorsese, despite both being his regular muses. Scorsese began his working
relationship with Robert De Niro with 1973’s Mean Streets, and the duo went on to make Taxi Driver,
New York New York, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, Goodfellas, Cape Fear and Casino. Then
De Niro himself introduced Scorsese to Leonardo DiCaprio, who he worked with on This Boy’s Life,
and Scorsese went on to make Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island and The
Wolf of Wall Street with DiCaprio, before working with De Niro for the first time in 20 years
with his last movie The Irishman. And now, the opportunity has finally come about for all
three to work together, with De Niro playing the villainous William Hale, and DiCaprio his nephew
Ernest Burkhart, caught between his loyalty to his uncle and his love for his Osage family. The film
will also star the likes of Jesse Plemons, Lily Gladstone, Tantoo Cardinal and Louis Cancelmi.
3- The film will be Martin Scorsese’s first ever western. As someone who is a big fan of
the likes of John Ford and Sergio Leone, and who’s work is highly influenced by westerns,
it’s surprising that, in a career spanning over 50 decades Scorsese has yet to delve
into the genre. One of the things that attracted Scorsese to the project was the theme of genocide,
and exploring the mentality of being able to kill a people
for being different to you. In an interview, the film director said:
“We think it’s a Western. It happened in 1921-1922 in Oklahoma. There are certainly cowboys,
but they have cars and also horses. The film is mainly about the Osage,
an Indian tribe that was given horrible territory, which they loved because they
said to themselves that Whites would never be interested in it. Then we discovered oil there
and, for about 10 years, the Osage became the richest people in the world, per capita.
Then, as with the Yukon and the Colorado mining regions, the vultures disembark, the White man,
the European arrives, and all was lost. There, the underworld had such control over everything
that you were more likely to go to jail for killing a dog than for killing an Indian. It’s
so interesting to think about the mentality that leads us to this. The history of civilization goes
back to Mesopotamia. The Hittites are invaded by another people, they disappear, and later
it is said that they have been assimilated or, rather, absorbed. It is fascinating to
see this mentality which is reproduced in other cultures, through two world wars.
And which is therefore timeless, I think. This is the film that we are going to try to make.”
4- The budget. Now you might have thought that The Irishman was kinda expensive at around $150m,
being a gangster film and all, but it was necessary given the degaing CGI
required on the elderly cast for flashback scenes. This was one of the key reasons why
the film was rejected by Hollywood studios and Netflix ended up financing the picture.
And you might also think that Scorsese would now go back to making mid budget movies that
would have no trouble finding financing. Well it might surprise you to learn then,
that Killers of the Flower Moon is set to be even more expensive than The Irishman
with a budget of a whopping $200m dollars. And just as they did with The Irishman,
Paramount Pictures sold the picture to a streaming platform, this time Apple Studios. However,
this time round, Scorsese’s film will get a full theatrical release, unlike The Irishman,
as Paramount remain the distributors of the film, and the movie will then head over to Apple TV+.
And it wasn’t only the huge budget which gave Paramount cold feet, which brings us to number 5:
5- The script changes. Originally, Killers of the Flower Moon was set to be a straight up murder
mystery with Leonardo DiCaprio playing the lead FBI investigator looking to solve the murders of
the Osage natives. However, DiCaprio became interested in playing the morally ambiguous
Ernest Burkhart, and it wasn’t a case of a simple character change, rather the script was given a
major overhaul, with it being described as less commercial and more of a moody character study.
Screenwriter Eric Roth said that he and Leonardo DiCaprio fought over the script, with DiCaprio
winning half of the arguments and Roth winning half. The movie seems set to now focus primarily
on the villains of the picture, and DiCaprio’s character was passed to Jesse Plemons,
with he and DiCaprio quoted by Roth as sharing around the same amount of screentime.
6- Scorsese has worked closely with the Osage nation for the film. As well as having numerous
native americans in his picture, Scorsese visited the Osage nation in order to better
learn their culture and to work with their leaders to accurately depict the Osage tribe in his film.
One of the film’s lead consultants is Chief of the Osage Nation Geoffrey Standing Bear,
and another is Osage Nation Film Ambassador Chad Renfro. Scorsese and DiCpario made a
presentation for Standing Bear and Renfro where they addressed their intentions with the film,
citing themes of trust and betrayal as key, and how the story of Mollie Kyle and Ernest Burkhart
is a microcosm of the wider betrayal of the Osage people by the white community.
7- The crew. Killers of the flower moon has a high profile team behind it. The movie is written by
eric roth, the script writer of The Insider, Forest Gump and The Curious Case of Bengamin
Button. Rodrigo Prieto, who shot Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, Silence and The Irishman,
is the cinematographer of the film. Legendary production designer Jack Fisk, who worked on
There will be blood and numerous Terence Malik films, is working on the film as is longtime
Scorsese editor Thelma Schoonmaker and longtime Scorsese music collaborator Robbie Robertson
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