AppleTV+ Will Finance Martin Scorsese's Upcoming ‘Killers of the Flower Moon'

According to Variety, AppleTV+ and Martin Scorsese have teamed up to distribute the filmmaker’s upcoming movie “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Paramount is still set to distribute the movie and Apple will both finance it and serve as its creative studio.

Supposedly, the budget on ‘Killers’ had inflated to a worrisome $225M and started to get Paramount a little too nervous about its commercial prospects by shelling out money for such a risky endeavor. The troubled post-production on the film resulted in Scorsese reaching out to countless studios including Netflix, Universal, and MGM. Ultimately, AppleTV+ won out the rights.

Scorsese’s last movie (“The Irishman”) was a Netflix original with an equally expensive $173 million budget. However, ‘Killers’ is said to cost $50 million more than that figure and forced Paramount’s hand to partner with another distributor on the film. Has Scorsese been so spoiled by the creative and budgetary freedoms given to him by Netflix on “The Irishman” that he’d rather bypass all the back-and-forth artistic clashing involved with a big studio in favor of the total creative carte blanche a streamer gives? That’s what looks to be the case, it seems as though Scorsese has learned to stop worrying about theatrical and love streaming.

The 77-year-old director of such classics as “Goodfellas,” “Raging Bull,” and “Taxi Driver” was set to shoot “Killers of the Flower Moon” in March,, but production was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The film itself, an adaptation of David Grann's grisly murder-mystery novel, is set to star Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. The screenplay, written by Eric Roth, takes place in 1920s Oklahoma and tells the story of a corrupt FBI investigation on Osage Indians who suddenly start to get murdered. There is currently no release date for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” but one assumes the possibility of a fall 2021 release primed and ready for Oscar season.