Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower moon is his next film after The Irishman,
and at the time of the making of this video the film is in pre-production,
with sets being constructed and new actors constantly being added to the cast.
The movie is Scorsese’s first feature length film where he directs both Robert DeNiro and Leonardo
DiCaprio, with whom he has worked with separately over 10 times. It’s very exciting news, given how
Scorsese worked with De Niro for about 20 years, and then didn’t work with him for around 20 years
until their reunion film The Irishman, and within that 20 year gap Scorsese’s main man was Leonardo
DiCaprio, who was introduced to Scorsese by De Niro himself, and fans have beens wondering just
when exactly will we get a film where all three of these guys finally work together, and here it is.
And it isn’t some novelty pre-retirement picture, it’s based on an incredible work by David Grann
which charts the real life reign of terror, a period during early 20th century Oklahoma
where the native American Osage tribe saw vast numbers of their members wiped out, and the
federal government sent in a team of detectives to work out who was doing the killing and why.
DiCaprio and De Niro both have juicy roles as the villains, with Jessy Plemons having
signed onto the picture as Tom White, the lead investigator of the murders.
Since then, a lot of actors have joined the cast, and he movie pretty much has its’ main cast now.
The movie is mainly made up of Native American actors, like the role of Lizzie Q is being
played by Tantoo Cardinal, Lily Gladstone is playing Mollie Burkhart, the wife of Leonardo
DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart and the niece by marriage of Robert De Niro’s William Hale.
A few of the gang from The Irishman have joined the film too, in addition to De Niro and Plemons,
with Louis Cancelmi, that’s Sally Buggs, playing the criminal Kelsie Morrison,
meaning he’s probably have a few verbal spouts with Jessy Plemons’ Tom White -I wonder if they’ll
start arguing about fish again? Gary Basaraba who played Frank Fitzsimmons is also going to
be in the film. Rodrigo Prieto is returning to do the cinematography after The Irishman,
Silence and The Wolf of Wall Street, Thelma Schoonmaker is of course editing, Robbie Robertson
is set to do the music, and it’s worth noting that Jack Fisk is the production designer. He has only
about 20 credits to his name since the 1970s and yet so many of his films, like There Will
be Blood and The Revenant look great, and he’s a perfect pick for a period drama such as this.
The film is set to have an astonishing budget of almost 200 million dollars. It’s an expensive
grand movie with top tier actors, and it has been described by Scorsese himself as a western. Of
course, a film set during the 1920s is kinda pushing it when you describe it as a western,
but having read the book, I guess it makes sense. All the usual hallmarks of a great western are
there, the western landscape, the strong silent hero, bandits, cowboys, Indians, you name it.
In a recent interview, the film’s writer Eric Roth,
who’s written The Insider and Forrest Gump, said that the movie is scheduled
to start filming in around 2 weeks, which is around the end of April.
As previously mentioned in another video, Roth and Leonardo DiCaprio argued over the script,
and a major overhaul of the screenplay was done with DiCaprio playing
a completely different character – he was originally supposed to play the
one played by Plemons – and the film shifting focus onto the villains and becoming something
of a moody character study rather than the initially proposed commercial murder mystery.
Roth acknowledged it has been a long journey bringing the story to the screen, and he added:
"I think this is my fifth year or six year on it. And there were some changes that came
about that were interesting about what Leonardo was going to play in it. I think in the long
run — we all had our moments of trying to figure out how best to portray things because the story
is so impactful — and I think we ended up with exactly the right material and that Marty made
the right decisions. I just think he's going to make — and obviously I would say this — but
I think [of] all my work, this one could be one of the great movies. I really mean that. I think
it has all the ingredients, which I don't want to jinx it, but the story is so important"
As mentioned Scorsese’s film is going to cost in the region of $200m,
which is a superhero movie level budget, and even more than The Irishman’s budget which
was also an insane amount for a gangster film. Roth addressed the hefty price tag by saying
this movie is likely to be Scorsese’s effort to make the last great big budget western,
much like how The Irishman seems like it is the last big budget all star gangster film.
He said:
"I know Marty's trying to make a movie that's probably the last Western that
would be made like this, and yet, with this incredible social document underneath it,
and the violence and the environment. I think it'll be like nothing we've ever seen, in a way.
And so this one is, to me, one for the ages.”
Roth was asked whether Killers of the Flower Moon is a full blown western, and the answer was
a bit of yes and a bit of no, with him saying it certainly feels like a western to him. He added:
"I mean, people will be in suits and things because it's 1921. It's during the prohibition,
but the ethos I think is very Western. And also, I think Western justice, about how they said that
you couldn't find 12 white men to convict a white man of killing a native American.
You’d have a better chance of having them convicted of kicking a dog.
And that's kind of the feeling on that. And then also, you have these incredible people,
the Osage family that a character comes and marries into, and who's a villain and who
isn't. And then into that comes a kind of heroic guy — Tom White, his name was, who Jesse Plemons
is playing — who was in the Texas Rangers, and you couldn't get more Western than that"
What with Leonardo DiCaprio playing a different character now,
and Jessy Plemons playing the character he was originally supposed to play,
Roth was asked whether Plemons is now the main character in the show.
"I wouldn't say [Plemons is] the lead. I would say that he was the designated hero. But yeah,
I think that's fairer because I think the parts are pretty equal and they were always equal to a
certain extent, and Leo's part is very complicated and very interesting. It's a smart part for a
smart actor to play. I mean, if Montgomery Clift was alive, I think he might think of playing him"
Roth also added that Scorsese knows this like "the back of his hand” because he’s been preparing
for the film for so long, and given the lengthy filming schedule, which stretches through July,
Roth advised audiences to not expect the film to come out before 2022.
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