‘Killers of the Flower Moon' Screenwriter Has “Mixed Feelings" About The Film

Paul Thomas Anderson rewrote “Killers of the Flower Moon.” I am almost certain of that. Last year, two solid industry sources confirmed this to me, and ever since then I’ve spoken to more people who told me the same thing.

No trade has decided to report on this. Is it out of respect for credited ‘Killers’ screenwriter Eric Roth? Why should such a story be covered up? It’s a big deal, having both Scorsese and PTA collaborating on a film together, and the fact that it’s not being acknowledged publicly is baffling.

I’ll get to some of the stuff that has come out about the PTA rewrites, but first off here’s a new interview where Roth talks about his work on ‘Killers’ and how he has “mixed feelings” about the finished product (via Final Draft):

Leonardo was concerned that it would be too much of a great white hope story, so he decided to play the other part which is fine except I had already written five years worth of scripts. I have some mixed feelings about the movie, not, um, I love the movie all and all, Marty made an incredibly sorrowful and accurate portrayal of what we did to these people and the greed. I think it’s a very important movie. I just wish it had more entertainment. I love Tom White, the [originally conceived] main character who Jesse Plemons ended up playing. I wish we had more of him.

Gosh, I really just want Roth to come out and say it. Just admit you didn’t write ‘Killers.’ This isn’t the only interview where Roth’s thrown shade at the film; he’s mentioned, multiple times, how much he loved the original un-filmed draft of the screenplay.

The story goes that DiCaprio was originally supposed to play the FBI agent, Tom White, in the lead role of the film. There was then a total script overhaul on ‘Killers.’ Scorsese and DiCaprio decided that, instead of depicting the point of view of the FBI, who investigate the Osage murders, they were instead going to focus their story on the Osage nation.

Lily Gladstone had previously stated that ‘Killers’ was a “different movie than the one [Scorsese] walked in to make,” almost entirely because of what the Osage community had to say about how it was being made and what was being portrayed [white men as the heroic saviors]. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Gladstone admitted that, when she had first signed on to the film, and with Roth’s original draft of ‘Killers,’ she only had three scenes in the entire script.

Now, I’m not the only one claiming PTA’s involvement in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon.’ In January 2024, The Guardian’s Charles Bramesco reported (via X) that Roth wasn’t on the awards circuit for ‘Killers’ because he didn’t actually write most of the film, and that “pretty much the entire thing was written from scratch” by PTA.

Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells then poured fuel on the fire when he spoke to a key creative on “Killers of the Flower Moon” who called PTA “an artist” and said “anything he may have done [rewrite-wise] could have only helped.”

Now, what PTA did on the ‘Killers’ script is actually a lot more common than people think; high-level, mutually admiring peers do uncredited rewrites as a favor. It’s happened an innumerable amount of times in Hollywood. PTA recently did it on another film, Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” which had an original draft written by David Scarpa (who, much like Roth, kept his writing credit).