At this rate, don’t be surprised if Quibi ends up as a production partner on a future Martin Scorsese movie. As reported by the Hollywood trades on Wednesday, Apple will partner with Paramount to produce the director’s next film, Killers of the Flower Moon, which will unite Scorsese with frequent collaborators Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro simultaneously for the first time.
As part of the deal, according to Deadline, Paramount will distribute Killers of the Flower Moon in theaters—but as an Apple Original Film. The fledgling streamer and tech giant will both finance the project and act as “creative studio.”
Based on David Grann’s book of the same name, Killers of the Flower Moon tells the story of the Osage Indian Nation murders in 1920s Oklahoma, which dovetailed with the rise of the FBI. “We think it’s a Western,” Scorsese said previously of the project. “The film is mainly about the Osage, an Indian tribe that was given horrible territory, which they loved because they said to themselves that Whites would never be interested in it. Then we discovered oil there and, for about ten years, the Osage became the richest people in the world, per capita. Then, as with the Yukon and the Colorado mining regions, the vultures disembark, the White man, the European arrives, and all was lost. There, the underworld had such control over everything that you were more likely to go to jail for killing a dog than for killing an Indian.”
He added, “It’s so interesting to think about the mentality that leads us to this. The history of civilization goes back to Mesopotamia. The Hittites are invaded by another people, they disappear, and later it is said that they have been assimilated or, rather, absorbed. It is fascinating to see this mentality which is reproduced in other cultures, through two world wars. And which is therefore timeless, I think. This is the film that we are going to try to make.”
First announced in 2018, the cost of Killers of the Flower Moon has long been a discussion point. Back in April, when it was first reported that Paramount had expressed concern about the budget, costs for the forthcoming film were estimated to potentially top $200 million. According to The Hollywood Reporter, however, Killers of the Flower Moon might wind up with an even higher price tag: the trade reported that Netflix, which produced Scorsese’s most recent film, The Irishman, was willing to spend upward of $215 million, “but that may not have been enough.”
Apple has pushed to add more creative firepower to its streaming platform, recently acquiring the Tom Hanks movie Greyhound for Apple TV+ from Sony. But partnering with Scorsese for a project starring two of the biggest actors of the last 50 years is a leveling up that could pay dividends down the line. Just ask Netflix Film head Scott Stuber.
“When I took the job [in 2017], I was building a new studio. We have no IP, we have no library, we can’t remake things. We don’t have the great cache that [Disney] has over there. So you have to say, what is your opportunity? And your opportunity is filmmakers. For us to get Marty at Netflix was a big thing. It was a big win,” he said to The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year. “We have enough subscribers that we think the movie can deliver on. Thankfully he over-delivered.”
The Irishman landed 10 Oscar nominations and was one of 2019’s best-reviewed movies. Now Apple hopes Scorsese can do it all over again.
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