Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese Will Start Production on KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON Soon

Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese are teaming up again for a new film project called Killers of the Flower Moon. It’s based on a book written by David Grann and the movie was announced about a year ago, but we’ve no learned that it will be their next film project. Scorsese will direct the film from a script written by Eric Roth and DiCaprio will star.

The story is set in 1920s Oklahoma and revolves around the Osage Nation, “who were the richest people per capita in the world, after oil was discovered under their land and then they were murdered, one by one. As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case and unraveled a chilling conspiracy and one of the most monstrous crimes in American history.”

Scorsese had this to say in a statement:

“When I read David Grann’s book, I immediately started seeing it — the people, the settings, the action — and I knew that I had to make it into a movie. I’m so excited to be working with Eric Roth and reuniting with Leo DiCaprio to bring this truly unsettling American story to the screen.”

This project will mark the fifth film DiCaprio and Scorsese have worked on together. The last film they worked together on was The Wolf of Wall Street. DiCaprio is currently shooting Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Scorsese is in post-production on his Netflix mob drama The Irishman.

Production on the film is scheduled to start during the summer of 2019. This is a pretty fascinating story and you can read a detailed description of it below:

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under mysterious circumstances. 

In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes like Al Spencer, the “Phantom Terror,” roamed—many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll climbed to more than twenty-four, the FBI took up the case. It was one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations and the bureau badly bungled the case. In desperation, the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only American Indian agents in the bureau. The agents infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest techniques of detection.  Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history. 

In Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. Based on years of research and startling new evidence, the book is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals. But more than that, it is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward American Indians that allowed the murderers to operate with impunity for so long. Killers of the Flower Moon is utterly compelling, but also emotionally devastating.

Source: Variety