By After slaving away at The Irishman for years, Martin Scorsese's already got his next directing job on the horizon. He's going to get going on Killers of the Flower Moon, and it's not going to be just any old Scorsese joint. It'll be the first one to star both of his great muses: Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro (well, apart from that weird advert for a Macau casino that the trio did, alongside Brad Pitt, which now feels like a fever dream).
Anyway, it's all very exciting. So, understandably, Scorsese's keen to get going. He could probably get hold of the de-ageing tech that turned De Niro into a slightly creaky 40-year-old and sandblast some of the years away, but the fact is he's aware he's not got an enormous amount of time left. Which is good for us, the audience, as means the film should land soon rather than later. But what else do we know about Killers of the Flower Moon?
What's it about?
It's based on the book of the same name by the journalist David Grann, which explores the murders of a number of wealthy Native American people from the Osage Nation in Osage County, Oklahoma, back in the Twenties. The deaths came after enormous oil deposits were found on Osage Nation land, and the Osage people were found in court to be legally entitled to the profits. So, in the grand tradition, the white Americans exploiting land that wasn't theirs found a way to be even worse than you thought they could be to native peoples, and started to have them killed. Some estimates put the number of deaths in the hundreds.
Who's in it?
As Variety reported in October 2018, DiCaprio is in, and IMDb lists him as playing Ernest Burkhart. The real Burkhart was one of the most intensely appalling of the intensely appalling men who killed in their thirst to get at the oil. De Niro's involvement was confirmed by DiCaprio on stage at the Screen Actor's Guild Awards, and IMDb says he's playing William Hale. Hale was a Texan cattleman who styled himself as the 'King of the Osage Hills', and was also thoroughly horrible.
Who else is involved?
No idea. Well, some idea. No further cast members have been announced, but Eric Roth, who wrote Munich and Forrest Gump is sorting out the script. He also did The Postman and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but try not to hold it against him.
Any other business?
We've got this from Scorsese, which he said when the film was first announced in late 2018: "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."
When's it out?
Speaking very, very, very broadly, it might be out in 2021. Might be.
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