Martin Scorsese Discusses The First Western He's Directing KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON
Director Martin Scorsese is preparing to helm his very first western with his adaptation of Killers of the Flower Moon. The filmmaker is reteaming with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro to tell this story.
The film is based on the non-fiction book by David Grann, with a script written by Eric Roth. The story is described as follows:
At the end of the nineteenth century, the Osage Indians were driven onto a presumed worthless expanse of land in northeastern Oklahoma. But their territory turned out to be atop one of the largest oil deposits in the United States; to obtain that oil, prospectors were required to pay the tribe for leases and royalties. By the 1920s, the members of Osage Nation had become the wealthiest people per capita in the world. And then the Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances.
In a recent interview with Cahieurs du Cinema via The Film Stage, Scorsese talks about the story the movie tells and explains how the movie is a western:
“We think it’s a western. It [takes place] in 1921-1922 in Oklahoma. They 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 ten 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.”
When members of the Osage start to be mysteriously murdered, the FBI sends an agent to investigate what’s going on, and the agent puts together an undercover team and unites with the Osage to discover the tragic truth of what is happening.
Scorsese confirms in the interview that DiCaprio will take on the main FBI agent role and that De Niro will play William Hale, ‘King of the Osage Hills,’ the man who is responsible for most of the murders.
This is certainly going to be a fascinating film to watch! Below you’ll find a couple of photos of Scorsese scouting locations.