Today (October 20), Martin Scorsese releases epic new film Killers Of The Flower Moon, and has more projects up his sleeve.
The legendary 80-year-old director’s new film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro, and is based on a series of murders in the Osage tribe in 1920s Oklahoma.
Speaking to NME about the film, Scorsese said: “For some reason, the story stuck with me. And I think a lot of it had to do with the nature of the system that was created in Oklahoma at that time. And still, to a certain extent is.
“What I mean by the system is how, ultimately, the indigenous people, by sheer fortune, became the richest people in the world. And at which point, they were totally controlled. And they were completely in a way swindled out of their money as much as possible by whites in every capacity.”
After working for many years on the project, Scorsese now turns his sights to what’s next.
What do we know about Martin Scorsese’s next movie?
A few days ahead of the release of Killers Of The Flower Moon, Scorsese confirmed that he will reunite with DiCaprio on his next movie, which is titled The Wager.
Speaking to The Times, Scorsese confirmed that this will be his next project, and is based on the novel The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann, the same author who wrote the book that Killers Of The Flower Moon is based on.
There is not a great deal of information available about Scorsese’s adaptation of the book, but The Wager concerns the real-life fate of the crew of the HMS Wager, a British navy ship wrecked off the coast of Chile in the mid-1700s.
DiCaprio is expected to play Captain David Cheap, whose crew mutiny against him and abandon him after the shipwreck.
After work on The Wager, other forthcoming Scorsese projects include a biopic of Jerry Garcia starring Jonah Hill and another team-up with DiCaprio on a Teddy Roosevelt biopic. He is also working on adapting Marilynne Robinson’s novel Home.