Apple and Netflix are in talks with director Martin Scorsese on a super-expensive movie project for its Apple TV+ streaming service, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The project, “Killers of the Flower Moon” starring Leonardo DiCaprio, has been slated for production at Paramount Pictures. However, with the budget ballooning past US$200 million, the studio may pass, leaving the film looking for another home.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” would be based on the third non-fiction book by American journalist David Grann. The book investigates a series of murders of wealthy Osage people that took place in Osage County, Oklahoma in the early 1920s—after big oil deposits were discovered beneath their land. After the Osage Native Americans are awarded rights in court to the profits made from oil deposits found on their land, the Osage people prepare for receiving the wealth which they believe they are legally entitled to from sales of their oil deposits.
A complex plot is put into place to eliminate the Osage people inheriting this wealth from oil profits on a one-by-one basis by any means possible. The book details the newly formed FBI’s investigation of the murders, as well as the eventual trial and conviction of cattleman William Hale as the mastermind behind the plot.
