Since Gangs of New York in 2002, Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese have been nearly inseparable. The actor/director duo have collaborated on five highly-acclaimed projects in total including The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island and The Wolf of Wall Street. After five years apart, it has now come time for them to team up again on a new project, an adaptation of the best-selling book Killers of the Flower Moon.
Upon announcement of the upcoming film, Martin Scorsese told Variety that when he read the book by David Grann, he could imagine it as movie right away and decided it would be his next film endeavor. Screenplay writer of hit films such as 2018's A Star is Born, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Forrest Gump Eric Roth is set to write the screenplay. The film will be produced by Scorsese and Imperative Entertainment, that acquired the rights to the book in 2016. Killers of the Flower Moon is set to begin production in summer 2019.
The source material published in 2017 is about the Osage native American murders that took place in Osage County, Oklahoma in the 1920s, and was one of the newly-formed FBI's first cases. The Osage people were the richest in the world after oil on their land was unearthed. until they were murdered one by one and a massive conspiracy was uncovered. The collaborators have taken on many projects in the past dealing with unsettling and important stories in American history, so this project fits right in for the two talents. David Grann previously authored The Lost City of Z which was adapted by Amazon Studios in 2017 and starred Charlie Hunnam and Robert Pattinson.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese last worked together on the highly-acclaimed 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street which was recognized by the Academy with five Oscar nominations. Since the success, DiCaprio has continued to work with world-class directors such as in Alejandro Iñárritu's The Revenant and in Quentin Tarantino's upcoming project Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The actor is reportedly in early talks to work with Steven Spielberg again in a Ulysses Grant biopic and is also said to work with Scorsese on a Teddy Roosevelt biopic as well.
Martin Scorsese is currently working on a Netflix movie with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino called The Irishman. The $140 million project is a mob movie about the murder of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa. The auteur director is one of many high-profile filmmakers creating projects for the streaming service as the company starts to work with theaters to release their films alongside availability on its platform.
Killers of the Flower Moon is in early stages of development and won't likely hit theaters until sometime in 2020 or 2021. Before the talented duo's next collaboration, they have exciting projects to get excited for in between. You can see Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood on July 26, 2019 and Martin Scorsese's The Irishman in an undisclosed date in 2019.
