Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese’s first movie since 2019’s Best Picture nominee The Irishman, was originally about the birth of the FBI. But “at a certain point,” the filmmaker told Time magazine, “I realized I was making a movie about all the white guys. Meaning I was taking the approach from the outside in, which concerned me.”
Scorsese, screenwriter Eric Roth, and star Leonardo DiCaprio reworked the script to make it less of an FBI origin story and more of a love story between Ernest and Mollie, the characters played by DiCaprio and the “amazing” Lily Gladstone. That’s evident in the new trailer for the film (“I don’t know what you said, but it must have been Indian for handsome devil,” Ernest flirts at one point). You can watch it below.
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At the turn of the 20th century, oil brought a fortune to the Osage Nation, who became some of the richest people in the world overnight. The wealth of these Native Americans immediately attracted white interlopers, who manipulated, extorted, and stole as much Osage money as they could before resorting to murder. Based on a true story and told through the improbable romance of Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), Killers of the Flower Moon is an epic western crime saga, where real love crosses paths with unspeakable betrayal.
Killers of the Flower Moon, which also stars Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion, William Belleau, Louis Cancelmi, Tatanka Means, Michael Abbot Jr., Pat Healy, Scott Shepard, and Jason Isbell, opens in theaters on October 20th.