Details about Martin Scorsese’s latest movie, Killers Of The Flower Moon, have been surfacing in recent months. Yesterday, some more information about the cast was revealed and it should delight music fans, as Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson have secured roles in the film, Deadline reports. They join a cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and Jesse Plemons.
Isbell is making his acting debut in the film and plays Bill Smith, an enemy of Ernest Burkhart. Simpson, who has had a handful of film and TV roles in recent years, plays rodeo champion and bootlegger Henry Grammer.
The film is based on David Grann’s 2017 book Killers Of The Flower Moon: The Osage Murders And The Birth Of The FBI. A summary of the book from Grann’s website reads:
“In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. […] Many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll climbed to more than twenty-four, the FBI took up the case. It was one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations and the bureau badly bungled the case. In desperation, the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only American Indian agents in the bureau. The agents infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.”
Revisit our 2017 interview with Grann about Killers Of The Flower Moon here.
Sturgill Simpson is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.