Apple has seemingly beaten Netflix to fund Martin Scorsese’s next movie Killers of the Flower Moon, Deadline reported late Wednesday.
The forthcoming Apple Original movie will feature Scorsese regulars Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro in the lead roles.
Scorsese’s last movie, The Irishman, was famously funded by Netflix, the first time one of Scorsese’s movies had been funded by a streaming video service. The movie went on to receive 10 Oscar nominations.
According to Deadline, the budget for Killers of the Flower Moon is between $180 million and $200 million — even after tax credits from agreeing to an Oklahoma shoot. It will be distributed in theatres by Paramount prior to being made available via Apple TV+. Paramount had originally planned to fund the movie itself, but supposedly balked at the high price tag.
The report notes that:
“The deals are being papered — Paramount still has to sign off — but I’m told when they are, it will be an Apple original film, and Paramount will distribute theatrically worldwide.”
This would be one of the highest profile Apple TV+ movies so far. Recently Apple acquired Greyhound, a World War II movie written by and starring Tom Hanks.
Killers of the Flower Moon is Scorsese’s first movie for Apple
Killers of the Flower Moon is based on New Yorker journalist David Grann’s 2017 non-fiction book of the same name. It is a mystery about multiple murders of wealthy Osage Native Americans in the 1920s. The investigation helped establish the FBI.
In his review for Rolling Stone, reviewer Sean Woods wrote, of the book, that, “Grann chronicles a tale of murder, betrayal, heroism and a nation’s struggle to leave its frontier culture behind and enter the modern world.” In other words, this sounds perfectly suited material for Scorsese.
This is not the first time Apple and Scorsese have worked together in some capacity. In 2012, Scorsese featured as a performer in an ad to promote Siri. In the ad, the film director uses Siri to check his calendar for the day. “I like you, Siri,” Scorsese said at the end of the ad. “You’re going places.”
