Last year finally paired A-listers Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt together for Quentin Tarantino’sOnce Upon a Time in Hollywoodand it looks like DiCaprio is going to continue this powerhouse pairing trend as he confirms that he will indeed be starring alongside Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese’s next movieKillers of the Flower Moon.
Until now the casting ofRobert De Nirohas been a tantalisting rumor, but it has now been confirmed by DiCaprio on Sunday during the 26th Screen Actors Guild Awards, where DiCaprio presented De Niro with the Life Achievement Award for a glittering career spanning nearly 50 years.
Though both actors and director have worked together prior to this in a 2015 short film directed byMartin ScorseseentitledThe Audition,Killers of the Flower Moonmarks the first time the trio have come together for a full-length feature. Prior to this, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro starred together in the 1993 dramaThis Boys Life, which honestly set DiCaprio on the acting path he is still currently on after he made a name for himself on the sitcomGrowing Pains. The pair also reunited for the 1996 dramaMarvin’s Room. It will have been over twenty years since the pair both starred together as leads in a movie.
Both actors have frequently collaborated with Scorsese over the years, withLeonardo DiCapriofirst working with the iconic director in 2002’sGangs of New York. This was then followed up with 2004’s Howard Hughes biographyThe Aviator, 2006’s Academy Award winning crime-thrillerThe Departed, the haunting mysteryShutter Islandin 2010 and finally 2013’sWolf of Wall Street.
Killers of the Flower Moonwill be De Niro’s tenth collaboration with Scorsese, a partnership that began in 1973 with the American crime filmMean Streets. Over the decades that followed De Nrio and Scorsese have given us some truly cinematic greats includingTaxi Driver,Raging Bull,The KIng of Comedy, andGoodfellas. The two recently reunited for Netflix’sThe Irishmanwhich isnow up for several Academy Awards.
Killers of the Flower Moonwill be based on the bookKillers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, 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. This sparks a major F.B.I. investigation involving J. Edgar Hoover.
Scrosese has addressed the movie, and the De Niro casting rumors previously, stating that he always envisioned him playing the villain of the story, William Hale.
“I’ve been working with Eric Roth on the script for a few years now, and we’re - now, actually, yesterday, in this room, and last night - we’re knocking away at this script, and restructuring it, rethinking it. Because it’s convenient to do a sort of detective story, but we all know what it is. So I want to explore something else, and that is the nature of a whole way of thinking as being complicit in genocide. It’s dehumanizing people. I was out in Oklahoma about six weeks ago, and ultimately, as the Osage told me, it’s about greed. And therefore you could think that these people don’t deserve any of it because they’re not human anyway. Not really human.”
Killers of the Flower Moonis due for release in 2021. This comes to us fromThe SAG Awards.
