Paramount has acquired the rights to finance and distribute the new collaboration between Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, an adaptation of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Paramount chief Jim Gianopolous announced at the studio’s CineEurope presentation in Barcelona on Wednesday.
Scorsese will direct the film, and DiCaprio is attached to star in the adaptation of David Grann’s non-fiction book from 2017. Eric Roth is penning the screenplay.
Imperative Entertainment originally acquired the book for $5 million ahead of its release in a bidding war that also included Paramount, as well as Netflix and Sony. Paramount’s original bid included an offer for DiCaprio to star and J.J. Abrams to direct.
Imperative Entertainment’s Dan Friedkin and Bradley Thomas are producing “Killers of the Flower Moon” alongside Scorsese and Emma Tillinger Koskoff for Sikelia Productions and DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions.
Grann’s non-fiction story is set in the 1920s and follows the richest people per capita in the world at the time, the members of Osage Nation in Oklahoma. The oil barons, however, were suddenly killed off one by one, with many more Osage residents dying under mysterious circumstances. J. Edgar Hoover appointed a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to go undercover along with a Native American agent to expose a chilling conspiracy.
Grann is also the author of “The Lost City of Z” and “The Old Man and the Gun,” both of which were recently adapted into films.
Scorsese is hard at work on his next film for Netflix “The Irishman” and just released the Bob Dylan documentary, also for Netflix, “Rolling Thunder Revue.” DiCaprio will next be seen in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.”
Deadline first reported the “Killers of the Flower Moon” news out of CineEurope.