Martin Scorsese talked about working on Killers of the Flower Moon in an interview with Time magazine. According to the director, he had to rewrite the script because it was about “white men.”
“At some point I realized I was making a movie about white guys. So I was seeing the story from his point of view and that bothered me,” says Scorsese.
The director’s new film is based on the book of the same name about the FBI investigation into a series of murders in the Osage tribe, the indigenous people of America, as well as the appropriation of their land by local millionaire William Hale in the 1920s. Initially, Scorsese and co-writer Eric Roth built their film adaptation around this plot, and Leonardo DiCaprio was supposed to play lead investigator Tom White.
So they decided to redo the entire script and change the perspective of the film. DiCaprio was cast in another role, Ernest Burkhart, a World War I veteran who becomes involved in his uncle’s plot to steal wealth from the Osage tribe. The new Flower Moon script focuses on Ernest and his marriage to Osage woman Molly (Lily Gladstone), as their relationship becomes increasingly complicated in the midst of a murder. These changes also delighted Lily Gladstone.
“Before the rewrite, I only had three pages of pretty sharp dialogue. But I had such a hard time working on those scenes that when COVID shut everything down and the project went silent for a minute, I thought I had failed the audition. About a year later, Martin Scorsese called me via Zoom. And then they sent me new games that contained beats. Suddenly there was this almost monologue scene… And I thought: “Wow, now I can insert a character here.” “This is incredible,” said the actress.
Killers of the Flower Moon is scheduled to hit theaters worldwide on October 18, 2023. After which the film will premiere on Apple TV+. At the Cannes festival, after the premiere, the creators were received with a nine-minute ovation. Critics praised the resulting film, but viewers complained about the four-hour length.
