I’m not surprised by Roger Friedman’s reporting that the latest cut for Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” clocks in at 3 hours 20 minutes. Scorsese loves to make lengthy epics.
Friedman adds that the Cannes Film Festival is very excited to premiere the film, but it won’t be in competition and won’t be the opening night film. It’ll be an out-of-competition title.
As I mentioned a week or so ago, Scorsese and his editor Thelma Schoonmaker are still working hard on it. The film isn’t ready yet, but it’s getting there.
I emailed Friedman last night to get more details and he tells me it’s mostly a case of Apple telling Scorsese to maybe snip it down to under three hours. It doesn’t mean he’ll listen to them.
Scorsese’s last film, “The Irishman,” was released in 2019 as a 3 and a half hour epic. The legendary filmmaker loves his lengthy films, his last few (“Silence” “The Wolf of Wall Street”) came in at just under three hours.
Initial production on the $200 million budgeted ‘Killers’ wrapped in October of 2021. Then a series of reshoots occurred in mid-2022, both in New York City and Oklahoma.
Between pre and post, Scorsese’s been working on this one for three years now. I doubt he’s even concentrating on his next film, which is supposed to be an adaptation of David Grann’s “The Wager.”
‘Killers’, written by Eric Roth, stars Leonardo DiCaprio Jesse Plemons, Robert De Niro and Lily Gladstone. Its source material is the best-selling 2017 non-fiction book by Grann, which is based on the series of 1920s Oklahoma murders in the Osage Nation committed after oil was discovered on tribal land.