Paramount Buys Martin Scorsese-Leonardo DiCaprio’s Crime Thriller ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’
By Dave McNary
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Paramount will finance and distribute the Martin Scorsese- murder mystery movie, “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
chief Jim Gianopolous announced the deal Wednesday at the studio’s CineEurope presentation in Barcelona. Scorsese will direct and DiCaprio is attached to star in the adaptation of David Grann’s non-fiction book. Eric Roth is writing the screenplay.
Imperative Entertainment partners Dan Friedkin and Bradley Thomas acquired the project in 2016, before Doubleday’s publication of Grann’s book. “Killers of the Flower Moon” is set in 1920s Oklahoma, where the newly created Bureau of Investigation began investigating a string of murders of wealthy Osage Indians who had been granted revenue rights to oil discovered under their lands. The book carries the subtitle “The Osage Murders and the Birth of the F.B.I.”
The project will mark the sixth film DiCaprio and Scorsese have worked on together, most recently teaming on 2013’s “The Wolf of Wall Street.” Variety first reported that DiCaprio and Scorsese had come on to the project in 2017 and the duo officially announced that they had come on board last October. They have also teamed on “Gangs of New York,” “The Aviator,” “The Departed” and “Shutter Island.”
Scorsese will produce alongside Imperative Entertainment’s Friedkin and Thomas, Sikelia Productions’ Emma Tillinger Koskoff, and Appian Way Productions. News about the Paramount deal was first reported by Deadline.
