While it’s only been days since Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” arrived worldwide on Netflix, we are going to take a break from that film and discuss what he’s about to begin production on, “Killers of the Flower Moon.” And apparently, much like “The Irishman,” ‘Killers’ is taking the story from a respected novel but putting a very Scorsese-like spin on it.
Speaking to Sight & Sound, the filmmaker updated the status of his next film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and explained why he’s not interested in doing a straight-up adaptation of the book by journalist David Grann. The book tells the true story of a series of famous murders that happened in Osage County, Oklahoma in the 1920s, which could have been linked to the discovery of oil deposits on the land of the Osage people.
As detailed by the filmmaker, the novel is very much a procedural, giving the details of the case and presenting them in a fairly linear fashion. And with Scorsese at the helm, this sort of retelling isn’t going to fly.
“I’ve been working with Eric Roth on the script for a few years now, and we’re – now, actually, yesterday, in this room, and last night – we’re knocking away at this script, and restructuring it, rethinking it. Because it’s convenient to do a sort of detective story, but we all know what it is,” explained Scorsese. “So I want to explore something else, and that is the nature of a whole way of thinking as being complicit in genocide. It’s dehumanizing people.”
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He added, “I was out in Oklahoma about six weeks ago, and ultimately, as the Osage told me, it’s about greed. And therefore you could think that these people don’t deserve any of it because they’re not human anyway. Not really human.”
Scorsese also confirms that his initial cast has been set, which includes Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. A production start date has yet to be confirmed, but the director says he hopes “to start shooting it by March or April.”