It sounds like filmmakerMartin Scorsesemay be taking a page out of friendSteven Spielberg’s playbook. While Spielberg is known to line up projects and shoot them extremely quickly, back-to-back, Scorsese’s pace is more leisurely, taking up to a year (or more) in the editing room to fine-tune his latest film. But if his longtime production designer is to be believed, Scorsese is gearing up to shoot two new movies back to back.
We know that Scorsese is getting ready to start shooting the mob dramaThe Irishmannext month, with an A-list cast that includesRobert De NiroandAl Pacino. That movie is set up at Netflix, and is one Scorsese has been mulling for years, but the filmmaker also put another project on his development slate recently calledKillers of the Flower Moon. The film is based on the true-crime thriller byThe Lost City of ZauthorDavid Grann,Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, and takes place in the 1920s, recounting how a string of murders of members of the Osage nation in Oklahoma over oil arose as one of the FBI’s first major homicide investigations.
We learned this past spring that Scorsese was developing the project withLeonardo DiCaprioandRobert De Niro, but Scorsese takes a long time to develop projects so we didn’t necessarily think it’d be going anywhere soon. However, speaking withVariety, Scorsese’s production designerDante Ferrettisays the filmmaker hopes to be shootingFlower Moonin the spring of next year, adding that he’s going to Oklahoma to do preliminary location scouting. Ferretti says he’s going to start prepping the film in September because “Scorsese will shoot it immediately after finishingThe Irishman.”
This is very curious indeed, asThe Irishmanshoot likely won’t be completed until December or so at the earliest, possibly later. And Scorsese is known to labor in the editing room for a long while, so would he go and shootFlower Moonbefore editingThe Irishman, or isThe Irishmanbeing put together quicker than usual? Or is Ferretti mistaken on the timeline andFlower Moonwill shoot after Scorsese completes post-production onThe Irishman, sometime later next year? It’s unclear, and this news is far from official, but as an Oklahoma native I’m excited to see this story brought to the screen, so here’s hoping this comes together.
