Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island, The Wolf of Wall Street — Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio clearly like working together. And when they do, their films usually end up being hits with critics and audiences alike.
A couple of years back, it looked like the pair’s next collaboration would be an adaptation of the Erik Larson book The Devil In The White City: Murder, Magic And Madness At The Fair That Changed America, but it now looks like another adaptation could jump in front of that film in the queue — or even replace it entirely.
According to Variety, the Oscar-winning actor and director are teaming up once again, this time to bring Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann, to the silver screen. Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) has already produced a draft of the script.
The book is set in the 1920s and focuses on the mysterious murders of several members of the oil-rich Osage Nation of Native Americans in Oklahoma — at the time, among the richest people in America. The ensuing FBI investigation was reportedly bungled, and the book’s promotional materials bill the event as “one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.”
Another Grann adaptation — The Lost City of Z — made its way to the big screen in April, and the success of that project seems to have made the author’s work a hot commodity in Hollywood. Imperative Entertainment purchased the rights to Killers of the Flower Moon for a cool $5 million and is developing the film, but stressed that it hasn’t progressed past “conducting preliminary research.” The title of the book will reportedly be shortened to Flower Moon for the film adaptation.
At the moment, Scoresese is busy working on The Irishman, but his longtime production designer Dante Ferretti said the helmer hopes to start shooting Killers of the Flower Moon in spring 2018. That start date is tentative at best, and no one has signed on the dotted line just yet. We’ll keep you updated as more information becomes available.
In the meantime, you’ll be able to catch DiCaprio in The Black Hand (2018), as well as check out Scorsese’s upcoming crime drama The Irishman, which stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Bobby Cannavale.
