Killers of the Flower Moon (film)

Killers of the Flower Moon is a 2023 American epic anti-Western crime drama film produced and directed by Martin Scorsese, who co-wrote the screenplay with Eric Roth. It is based on the 2017 book of the same name by David Grann. Set in 1920s Oklahoma, it focuses on a series of murders of Osage members and relations in the Osage Nation after oil was discovered on tribal land. The tribal members had retained mineral rights on their reservation, but a corrupt local political boss sought to steal the wealth.

Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and Lily Gladstone lead an ensemble cast, also including Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, and Brendan Fraser. It is the sixth feature film collaboration between Scorsese and DiCaprio, the tenth between Scorsese and De Niro, and the first between Scorsese and both actors overall (they previously all collaborated on the 2015 short film The Audition), and the eleventh and final between Scorsese and composer Robbie Robertson, who died two months before the film's release. The film is dedicated to Robertson.

Development began in March 2016 when Imperative Entertainment won the adaptation rights to the book. Scorsese and DiCaprio were attached to the film in 2017, with production expected to begin in early 2018. Following several pushbacks and delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, production was scheduled to start in February 2021, with Apple Studios confirmed to finance and distribute the film alongside Paramount Pictures. Principal photography ultimately took place between April and October 2021 in Osage and Washington counties, Oklahoma. The film was produced by Scorsese's Sikelia Productions and DiCaprio's Appian Way Productions, with its $200–215 million budget reportedly the largest amount ever spent on a film shoot in Oklahoma.

Killers of the Flower Moon premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2023. It was theatrically released in the United States on October 20, by Paramount Pictures, before streaming on Apple TV+ on January 12, 2024. The film grossed $158.8 million worldwide and received critical acclaim, with praise for Scorsese's direction, screenplay, production values, editing, cinematography, musical score, and cast performances, especially DiCaprio, Gladstone, and De Niro, although it received minor criticism for its runtime. It won Best Film at the National Board of Review and was named one of the top 10 films of 2023 by the American Film Institute. It was also nominated for ten Academy Awards (including Best Picture), seven Golden Globe Awards (including Best Motion Picture – Drama), nine British Academy Film Awards (including Best Film), and three SAG Awards. For her performance, Gladstone won the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress, and she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Osage Nation elders bury a ceremonial pipe, mourning their descendants' assimilation into White American society. Wandering through their Oklahoma reservation during the annual "flower moon" phenomenon of fields of blooms, several Osage find oil gushing from the ground. The tribe becomes wealthy as it retains mineral rights. However, the law requires court-appointed white legal guardians to manage the money of full and half-blood members, assuming them "incompetent".

In 1919, Ernest Burkhart returns from World War I to live with his brother Byron and uncle William King Hale on Hale's reservation ranch. Hale, a reserve deputy sheriff and cattle rancher, poses as a friendly benefactor to the Osage. Ernest and Byron commit armed robbery against the Osage. Ernest develops a romance with Mollie Kyle, an Osage whose family owns oil headrights. They marry in an Osage ceremony with Catholic elements and raise three children.

Hale contracts the killing of multiple wealthy Osage, explaining that Ernest will inherit more headrights the more of Mollie's family dies. Mollie is diabetic, and her mother, Lizzie, is ill. After Mollie's sister Minnie dies of a mysterious illness, Hale orders Byron to kill another of Mollie's sisters, Anna. Lizzie and the Osage council blame the white residents and urge the tribe to fight back.

The 1921 Tulsa race massacre causes further concern amongst the Osage that they could suffer similarly. Lizzie's ancestors welcome her to the afterlife as she dies. Hale has Ernest arrange the murder of Mollie's first husband, Henry Roan, but Ernest's hitman neglects to make the murder look like a suicide as instructed. Even so, the sheriff and judges are in Hale's pocket, so there are no investigations. An Osage Nation representative seeking to lobby Congress is murdered in Washington, D.C. Mollie hires private detective William J. Burns, but he is run off the reservation by Ernest and Byron.

Again at Hale's behest, Ernest arranges the bombing of the home of Mollie's last surviving sister, Reta, and her husband, Bill. As the last surviving member of her family, Mollie inherits their headrights. She travels to Washington and asks President Calvin Coolidge for help. Hale orders Ernest to poison Mollie's insulin to "slow her down". Mollie's condition worsens, and Ernest exhibits similar symptoms after also ingesting the poison.

Bureau of Investigation Agent Thomas Bruce White Sr. and his assistants discover the truth. Hale tries to cover his tracks by murdering his hitmen, but White arrests Hale and Ernest. Two agents find Mollie near death and rush her to the hospital, where it is found that she has been repeatedly poisoned. She recovers.

White persuades Ernest to confess and turn state's evidence against his uncle. Hale's attorney, W. S. Hamilton, tries to convince Ernest to claim he was tortured and recant. After his daughter dies of whooping cough, Ernest testifies, wanting to be around for his remaining family. Hale unsuccessfully tries to have Ernest murdered, and Mollie leaves Ernest after he refuses to admit to poisoning her.

A radio drama years later reveals the Shoun brothers were implicated in other "wasting deaths" but never prosecuted due to lack of evidence; Byron was tried as an accomplice to Anna's murder but served no prison time due to a hung jury.; Hale and Ernest were sentenced to life imprisonment but later paroled despite Osage protests; and Mollie died of diabetes-related complications in 1937 at the age of 50, her obituary stating that she was buried with her parents, sisters, and daughter while making no mention of the Osage murders.

The film closes with an overhead view of a 21st-century Osage powwow dancing circle.

The analysis of the themes in the book and film has centered on the difference between Killers of the Flower Moon and traditional Westerns in the old Hollywood tradition. Jorge Cotte of The Nation stated: "Unlike the visions of unbounded freedom found in traditional westerns, Martin Scorsese's new film is a study of a West bounded by the vertical geometry of oil rigs and the violent conspiracies of powerful men."

Cotte then indicated the thematic differences between the book version and the film version of Scorsese's film, stating: "At the center of Grann's book is a set of unsolved crimes: a slew of unsolved murders, then called the 'Reign of Terror', that tormented the Osage from 1921 to 1926, and the corresponding emergence of a Bureau of Investigation (the eventual FBI) that finally arrives to determine who is doing the murdering. The book is meticulously researched and as diligent in setting the context for these shocking acts as it is in examining J. Edgar Hoover's role in shaping the bureau and using the murders as a showcase for it... Scorsese's retelling ends up being narrower in focus. It does away with much of the original's sense of suspense and Hoover's role in the investigation, and instead focuses on how an individual descends, through greed, complicity, and cowardice, into unforgivable acts of despoliation and violence."

Niles Schwartz's review focuses on the film's theological dimensions, as well as the overarching theme of human greed undermining our society's ideals.

On March 10, 2016, Imperative Entertainment won the bidding war to make a film adaptation of David Grann's nonfiction book Killers of the Flower Moon and paid $5 million. The studio's Dan Friedkin and Bradley Thomas would produce the film. In April 2017, it was revealed that Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Robert De Niro were considering involvement in the film, adapted by Eric Roth. Both De Niro and DiCaprio had long histories of working with Scorsese, but the three had collaborated only once before in the short film The Audition (2015).

In June 2019, it was announced that Paramount Pictures would distribute the film. Scorsese later reached out to Netflix and Apple TV+ to finance and distribute the film, as Paramount had concerns about the film's budget reaching $200 million. Paramount was still open to a deal to be involved with the film alongside an additional partner. In May 2020, Apple TV+ was announced to co-finance and co-distribute the film, with Paramount remaining as distributor.

The initial script focused on the perspective of Thomas Bruce White Sr. and the Bureau of Investigation coming into Oklahoma to investigate the murders of the Osage Nation, with DiCaprio originally cast to star as White. This version of the script would have been a more faithful adaptation of Grann's book and, at one point, was nearly two hundred pages in length. Scorsese compared the initial draft to a police procedural and said that he and Roth struggled to complete the script due to their unfamiliarity and discomfort with writing for that genre.

Scorsese and Roth worked on the script for nearly two years before DiCaprio questioned Scorsese about where the heart of the story lay. After several meetings and dinners with members of the Osage, Scorsese realized that the real story came from their perspective. During those meetings, tribe members would constantly mention the marriage between the American war veteran Ernest Burkhart and the Osage tribe member Mollie Kyle and that the couple were indeed in love. This intrigued Scorsese, who concluded the heart of the film lay in the love story between Ernest and Mollie, as well as Mollie's self-deception in staying with her husband despite his onerous dealings.