Apple to Finance Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Next Movie

Apple is getting even more serious about its streaming game as of late, picking up yet another major film project that it will release in the future. Just days after purchasing the distribution rights to the Tom Hanks-starring Greyhound, Apple won a massive bidding war for the upcoming movie Killers of the Flower Moon. The film will be Apple’s highest profile original to-date, as Martin Scorsese is directing and the duo of Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro are attached to star.

According to a report from Deadline, Apple is coming out victorious in the bidding war over the rights to Killers of the Flower Moon, beating out the likes of studios such as Universal and MGM, as well as rival streaming service Netflix. Many thought Netflix was going to end up with the project after its partnership with Scorsese on The Irishman proved so successful.

Paramount was the studio in charge of Killers of the Flower Moon, but the studio has been concerned by the increasing price tag over the last few months. The budget is reportedly nearing $200 million, enormous for a crime drama.

Under the deal with Apple, who will stream Killers of the Flower Moon on Apple TV+, the film will still be released in theaters around the world when it arrives. Paramount will be partnering with Apple to distribute to theaters, but Apple will be footing the bill of production. Scorsese’s priority was making this film on an incredibly large scale, and it appears he will be able to do just that.

Killers of the Flower Moon has been a popular title throughout its development. The film is based on David Grann’s book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. It chronicles a series of murders of wealthy Osage Native Americans in Oklahoma in the 1920s, just after it’s discovered that there oil deposits beneath their land. The investigation into these murders helped establish the organization we know today as the FBI.

The script for Killers of the Flower Moon is written by Eric Roth, with Dan Friedkin and Bradley Thomas producing for Imperative Entertainment.