Killers of the Flower Moon looks to finally be on track, thanks to some big-name investors.
It’s been a long time coming since about April of this year. Martin Scorsese has been having a tough time getting the film Killers of the Flower Moon, an adaption of David Grann’s book of the same name, funded – despite Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro being on board to star in it.
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The best solution was to get the king of streaming services, Netflix, or maybe one of the newest streaming services such as Apple TV+ to assist Paramount Pictures with production. And now they believe they have locked that in.
Killers of the Flower Moon is Ready to Roll
The hero of the day is Apple, who is teaming up with Paramount Pictures to produce Killers of the Flower Moon. The only ruling to this partnership is that production has to be completed and finalized. Apple is taking a script from Netflix by placing its brand over the output as an Apple original movie, and Paramount will handle distribution around the world.
Deadline reported that Killers of the Flower Moon finally got unstuck from their financing snafu, after Paramount Pictures couldn’t provide an ample amount of the budget, which had apparently risen to somewhere between $180 and $200 million. If you haven’t heard of the novel before, check out its synopsis below:
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, they began to be killed off. One Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, watched as her family was murdered. Her older sister was shot. Her mother was then slowly poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances.
In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes such as Al Spencer, “the Phantom Terror,” roamed – virtually anyone who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll surpassed more than twenty-four Osage, the newly created F.B.I. took up the case, in what became one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations. But the bureau was then notoriously corrupt and initially bungled the case.
Eventually the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only Native American agents in the bureau. They infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest modern techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history.
Several years have gone by in the making of Killers of the Flower Moon. The movie production company Paramount purchased the rights of the book from Imperative Entertainment, but soon became apprehensive that the financial burden of the film wouldn’t allow them to complete it – even taking their on-location tax credit for shooting in Oklahoma into account. Thankfully, the film became a hot commodity with several studios like Universal, MGM, Apple, and Netflix vying for rights. The bonafide champ of the battle of the studio was, of course, Apple.
Apple’s goal is to have the biggest original movie yet with Killer of the Flower Moon. This movie would follow the recent purchase of World War II drama Greyhound starring Tom Hanks for its Apple TV+ streaming services. The hopes of getting Academy Awards nominations could make Apple a serious player in the studio game. The film The Irishman was another project that Paramount Pictures had a hard time funding after years of development, and which Netflix managed to alleviate. While it garnered ten nominations at the Oscars, it didn’t win any.
As a film-loving community, we appreciate the opportunity to see Martin Scorsese work once more with Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, who are powerhouse actors. Martin Scorsese directed the short film called The Audition, which also brought them together as they played fictionalized versions of themselves.
The whole idea of Killers of the Flower Moon sounds like a match made in heaven. Are you excited for the movie? Who else do you think will join the cast? Let us know in the comments below.
