Martin Scorsese has already set his next film post-Killers of the Flower Moon after buying the rights to a recent book.
The director recently completed work on his drama, an adaption of David Grann’s non-fiction book documenting the string of murders that plagued the Osage Indian tribe in Oklahoma during the 1920s after oil was found on their land. The case was deemed the FBI’s first homicide investigation.
Grann’s work will provide the inspiration for Scorsese’s next project – the author said in an August interview with French outlet Télérama that the filmmaker is planning to adapt The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder. Scorsese himself confirmed the news while speaking to The Times on 15 October.
Both Scorsese and his frequent collaborator Leonardo DiCaprio have obtained the rights to the novel, which was published earlier this year. The film tells the story of survivors of a shipwreck who, six months after returning home, are accused by three men of mutineering their ship.
The synopsis for The Wager reads: “Set in the 1740s, Wager’s story is set in motion when a patched-together boat with 30 emaciated men landed on the coast of Brazil.The men were the surviving crew of British ship that was chasing a Spanish vessel and had crashed onto an island in South America’s Patagonia region. Their tales of surviving the seas and elements made them heroes.
“However, six months later another vessel, even more beat up than the first one, ended up on the coat of Chile, this one with three men. These new sailors charged that the other men were actually mutineers.”
The adaptation will mark the eighth time Scorsese and DiCaprio have worked together. Their latest collaboration, Killers of the Flower Moon, is set to be releaed theatrically on 20 October ahead of its premiere on Apple TV+ in November.
It also stars Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro and Jesse Plemons. The film premiered at Cannes Film Festival in May, where it received a nine-minute standing ovation.
The Independent’s film critic Clarisse Loughrey, in her five-star review, said the film carries Scorsese’s “tradition fixations: the rotted core of man’s heart; how power breeds the impulse for destruction; the myths of cowboys and outlaws and the dirty truth to them”.
Leonardo DiCaprio looks poised to star in yet another Martin Scorsese film— (2023 Invision)
Killers of the Flower Moon will be the 80-year-old filmmaker’s first film since The Irishman, which was released in 2019.
Elsewhere in The Times interview, Scorsese said he will adapt Marilynne Robinson book Home before he officially retires.
