Martin Scorsese Calls His Upcoming ‘Killers Of The Flower Moon’ A “Western”

Martin Scorsese had months of discussions with the Osage Nation about turning David Grann’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” into a movie. However, Scorsese is finally set to film his adaptation of the grisly murder-mystery novel in Osage County next month, according to Cahiers du Cinema (via Premiere & The Film Stage),

DiCaprio and De Niro previously worked together on 1993’s “This Boy’s Life” and 1994’s “Marvin’s Room.” However, although longtime acting collaborators, they have never worked together on a Martin Scorsese movie. In the new interview with Cahiers, Scorsese hinted at ‘Killers’ potentially being a Western, even though it takes place in the 20th century.

“We think it’s a Western,” he said. “It happened 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.”

Scorsese has confirmed that Robert De Niro will play the part of William Hale, one of the main characters in the novel. The film, written by Eric Roth, an Oscar winner for “Forrest Gump,” is based on a non-fiction work from David Grann. Grann’s murder mystery is set in 1920s Oklahoma and tells the story of Osage Indians who suddenly started to get murdered, as did those trying to investigate. A corrupt FBI would eventually be tasked to investigate.

Scorsese and DiCaprio already have another project in the works, “The Devil in the White City,” but ‘Flower Moon’ seems to be the film that Scorsese will follow-up “The Irishman” with.  As mentioned, it is destined to be their sixth collaboration together, after "Gangs of New York," "The Aviator," "The Departed," "Shutter Island," and "The Wolf of Wall Street."