When you’re talking Martin Scorsese, you’re almost certain to get plenty of violence in your film, but it’s always called for. That certainly seems the case in the new, official trailer for Killers of the Flower Moon, Apple’s prestige film from Scorsese that documents the story of the Osage Nation and their systematic murders in order to steal their wealth. The film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, and Robert De Niro, tells the truly violent and abhorrent story of yet another dark and racist part of American history.
The movie, based on the true story of how the U.S. government set up a system that led to the murder of multiple Osage people in order for whites to inherit their money, is gunning for all the awards. As the Killers of the Flower Moon official trailer shows, it has a cast that only a name like Scorsese could pull together, including Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion, William Belleau, Louis Cancelmi, Tatanka Means, Michael Abbot Jr., Pat Healy, Scott Shepard, Jason Isbell, and Sturgill Simpson. And, yes, that is Brendan Fraser briefly glimpsed as the Brenaissance continues on from his Academy Award-winning turn in The Whale.
Scorsese, along with De Niro and DiCaprio, had been trying to make this movie, which is based on the book of the same name, for several years. However, things only came together recently with Apple willing to shell out the cash to land the director and the film’s story taking a drastic turn when the filmmaker realized that the focus of the book should not be the focus of the film. The book, which is subtitled “The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI,” places a lot of focus on the FBI’s agents coming in and kind of saving the day, but the film will focus primarily on the romance between Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio) and Mollie Kyle (Gladstone), as Ernest and his extended family slowly steal all of Mollie’s family’s wealth through murder. Ahhh, love.
Killers of the Flower Moon premieres on October 6 in select theaters, including IMAX, and then opens wide on October 20 before it starts streaming on Apple TV+.
