Killers of the Flower Moon is a 2023 American epic western crime drama film directed by Martin Scorsese from a screenplay he co-wrote with Eric Roth, based on the 2017 non-fiction book of the same name by David Grann. Set in 1920s Oklahoma, it focuses on a series of murders of Osage members and relations in the Osage Nation after oil was being produced on tribal land. Tribal members had retained mineral rights on their reservation, and whites sought to gain their wealth.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Lily Gladstone lead an ensemble cast, that also includes Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow and Brendan Fraser. It is the sixth feature film collaboration between Scorsese and DiCaprio and the tenth between Scorsese and De Niro. It is the eleventh and final collaboration between Scorsese and composer Robbie Robertson, who died two months before the film's release; the film is dedicated to Robertson.
Development began in March 2016 when Imperative Entertainment won the film adaptation rights to the book. Scorsese and DiCaprio were attached to the film in 2017, with production expected to begin in early 2018. Following several pushbacks and delays by virtue of the COVID-19 pandemic, production was scheduled to begin in February 2021, with Apple TV+ confirmed to finance and distribute the film alongside Paramount Pictures. Principal photography ultimately took place in Osage and Washington counties, Oklahoma, between April and October of 2021. The film was produced by Scorsese's Sikelia Productions and DiCaprio's Appian Way Productions, with its $200 million budget reportedly the largest amount ever spent on a film shoot in Oklahoma.
Killers of the Flower Moon premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2023. It was released in the United States on October 20, 2023, by Apple TV+, under their Apple Original Films label, and by Paramount Pictures, which screened the film in IMAX. The film is set for an unspecified streaming release on Apple TV+. The film received critical acclaim and has grossed $86 million worldwide.
Plot
Osage elders somberly bury a ceremonial pipe, mourning their descendants' assimilation into White American society. Wandering through their Oklahoma reservation, which features the annual "flower moon" phenomenon of fields of blooms, several Osage find oil gushing from the ground. The tribe becomes wealthy, as it retains mineral rights and members share in oil-lease revenues, though law requires court-appointed guardians to manage the money of full and half-blood members, assuming them "incompetent".
In 1919, the greedy, unintelligent Ernest Burkhart returns from World War I to live with his brother Byron and uncle William King Hale on Hale's large reservation ranch. The brothers, in masks, commit armed robbery of Osage people. Hale, a reserve deputy sheriff popularly called "King", poses as a friendly benefactor of the Osage, speaking their language and bestowing gifts, but he secretly schemes to murder them and steal their wealth. He tells Ernest, who works as a cab driver, to court Mollie Kyle, an Osage whose family owns oil headrights. A romance develops, and the two are married in a ceremony mixing Catholic and Osage elements.
Hale plans the deaths of several wealthy Osage. He tells Ernest he will inherit more headrights if more of Mollie's family dies; her mother Lizzie Q is ill. After Mollie's sister Minnie dies of a mysterious illness, Hale orders Ernest's brother Byron to kill Mollie's other sister, the rebellious Anna. Lizzie and the Osage council blame the reservation's white residents and urge the tribe to fight back. A newsreel of the 1921 Tulsa race riot in which Whites destroyed a thriving Black "Wall Street" and killed numerous people, causes concern that a similar attack could occur to the Osage. Lizzie sees her ancestors welcome her to the afterlife as she dies in her bed.
Ernest loves Mollie and they have children. Nevertheless, Hale persuades Ernest to poison Mollie's insulin; Ernest is in denial about its damage, as Hale insisted it would merely "slow her down." Ernest sometimes swallows the poison himself. Mollie's condition worsens. Hale orders the death of Henry Roan, Mollie's first husband, to collect on his life insurance, and has Ernest organize another murder. However, Ernest botches it, so Hale brutally paddles him. Hale then orders Ernest to arrange the murders of Rita, Mollie's last remaining sister, and her husband, by blowing up her house. Mollie inherits all her family's headrights.