Legendary director Martin Scorsese had his first release in four years in 2023’s Killers of the Flower Moon. The crime drama which followed the infamous Osage Indian Murders of the 1910s starred Scorsese’s usual collaborators Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, starring for the first time together in a Scorsese film.
The film followed the serial murders that took place among the Osage Indians in Oklahoma and were told from the perspective of Lily Gladstone’s Molly Burkhart and her husband Ernest Burkhart, played by DiCaprio. The actor revealed how the makers along with Martin Scorsese strove to find the heart of the story after not being satisfied with the original’s usual procedural storyline. Spoilers ahead.
Leonardo DiCaprio Was Supposed To Play A Different Character In Killers of the Flower Moon
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio was returning to collaborate with director Martin Scorsese after their previous dark comedy The Wolf of Wall Street. The duo had some of the most impressive partnerships in the past two decades, with films like Gangs of New York, The Aviator, Shutter Island, The Departed, and The Wolf of Wall Street.
Martin Scorsese, DiCaprio, and Robert De Niro, another frequent collaborator of the director, became attached to the adaptation of David Grann’s non-fiction book Killers of the Flower Moon, which was based on the Osage Nation Murders of the 1910s. The book followed one of the earliest cases of the FBI and how they solved the case of the serial murders.
When the adaptation first entered development, DiCaprio was supposed to play Tom White, the FBI agent tasked with investigating the murders by FBI director J Edgar Hoover himself. It was reportedly a classic procedural thriller, which followed the investigation and then revealed the killers with a final twist. However, DiCaprio was reportedly not satisfied with it.
He told Deadline that it was hard to convince the team to pivot to a different story with the same material as everything was developed and ready to go even before Martin Scorsese filmed 2019’s The Irishman. He said,
“In a lot of respects, the ship had already sailed, with the Tom White version. We were gearing up to make that movie…We were ready to go before The Irishman. We had two major round table script meetings when we were developing the book. We optioned it, and were very excited about creating Tom White as an interesting multifaceted character, which he was.”
DiCaprio mentioned that he and Scorsese wanted to explore the complicity and responsibility that they had to bring forth an Osage perspective to the story instead of just making it a ‘White savior’ story.
Martin Scorsese Assured Leonardo DiCaprio That He Would Make The Film Happen
Leonardo DiCaprio mentioned that they wanted to try to bring justice to the story from the Osage Indians’ perspective as it was an atrocity done to them, rather than it be a story of victory for the FBI. Hence, they decided to revamp it to explore the relationship between Robert De Niro’s William Hale and Ernest Burkhart, his nephew who is complicit in the killings.
However, this change in creative direction was reportedly not met with equal enthusiasm from the producers and everyone else involved. However, Martin Scorsese reportedly assured everyone that he would make sure the film gets made. DiCaprio said,
“Marty just said, I’m going to go do this other movie. We don’t have a script. And we pitched another version. It was not met with rocket fuel enthusiasm when we said that we were going to try this other idea. And Marty had to say, ‘Hey guys, look, trust me, I’m going to make this happen. I’ve done a couple of movies before.’”
Hence, from being attached to the film to play the role of the FBI officer who solves the mystery, DiCaprio ended up playing Ernest, the husband of Lily Gladstone’s Molly Burkhart. Ernest was the nephew of William Hale who orchestrated the killings in the Osage Nation and was also reportedly poisoning his wife Molly in order to become the sole owner of her wealth.
Killers of the Flower Moon is streaming on Apple TV+.
