Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese are obviously a little attached at the hip. They’ve made five movies together — “Gangs of New York,” “The Aviator,” “The Departed,” “Shutter Island” and “The Wolf Of Wall Street” and the short, “The Audition” — but it feels like any time a Scorsese project is announced, DiCaprio’s name is not far behind. Right now, the only back-burner project they’re still attached to is “The Devil In The White City,” but just look through the archives of any news site and you’ll see plenty of other times they’ve tried to team up. Remember DiCaprio almost starring as Frank Sinatra for Scorsese? Then there was DiCaprio starring in the remake of “The Gambler” which Rupert Wyatt would eventually go on to make with Mark Wahlberg. Like David Fincher who looks to see if Brad Pitt is available whenever he starts a new project, the Scorsese/DiCaprio relationship isn’t much different.
Well, throw another project into the mix. Deadline reports that DiCaprio, Scorsese and Robert De Niro — no stranger to the world of Scorsese films — are all eyeing an adaptation of the book “Killers Of The Flower Moon: The Osage Murders And The Birth Of The FBI” by David Grann.
Academy Award-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (“The Insider,” “Munich,” The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button”) wrote the script and the story was apparently purchased in a $5 million bidding war with several production companies.
None of the trio are attached, but evidently all are considering it. Obviously, DiCaprio, Scorsese and De Niro together would be the most tantalizing package and this would mark the first time they have ever worked together on a feature length project. The three men did make the aforementioned “The Audition” together, a short film promoting the opening of Melco-Crown’s movie-themed resort and casino in Macau co-starring Brad Pitt. Everyone played themselves including Scorsese. Why put together a project so crass? Three words: China, Macau and casinos: everyone involved probably got paid insane fuck you money. The kind of money that’s so outrageous, even people with fuck you money (Pitt, DiCaprio) aren’t foolish enough to turn it down. Here’s what Deadline has to say about the project.
Grann’s Killers Of The Flower Moon, which bows this week from Doubleday, tells the true crime story about multiple murders of members of the Osage Indian tribe in Oklahoma that occurred after they found oil on their lands. It is about conspiracy, greed and murder in the Indian nation — so bad the federal government had to step in. It also chronicles the rise of J. Edgar Hoover, who led the investigation into the murders and ended up making a name for himself.
What about “The Irishman” that Scorsese is reportedly trying to set up at Netflix? No deal has been set and it still might be in the tangles of a legal battle as Paramount owns the rights and would likely love to get handsomely paid to hand over the project to the deep-pocket streaming power player (personally not going to hold my breath for that project at the moment — the same thing happened to “Silence” and that took about seven/eight years to make once it was first announced with Daniel Day-Lewis and co.).
DiCaprio first came to the attention of Martin Scorsese through De Niro. The “Goodfellas” star worked with DiCaprio on “This Boy’s Life,” and was so impressed with his young co-star he told Scorsese at the time, “you have to work with this kid one day.”