Apple has reached a deal to help finance Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon film adaptation, says a new report from Deadline. Paramount will still handle the distribution of the film.
Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio are set to play leading roles in the film. Paramount had originally acquired the project but had recently allowed it to be shopped around after the studio balked at the project’s $180 to $200 million price tag.
Once word got out that the film was being shopped around, Netflix, Apple, Universal, MGM, and others started chasing it, but the deal is nearing closing with Apple.
Apple will help finance the film and become the creative studio, with the film still being released in theaters. However, the film will eventually end up on the Apple TV+ streaming service as an “Apple Original Film.” The film is the biggest title so far to be designated for the fledgling streaming service.
Production of the film “Killers of the Flower Moon” — which is based on David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction bestseller of the same name — is already partially underway. The book covers the real-life murder of oil-rich Osage Nation Native Americans in Oklahoma in the 1920s.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” is just the latest Scorsese project to go over budget and need rescuing after Paramount balked at cost overruns. Scorsese’s “The Irishman” was moved from Paramount to Netflix after the former decided the project was too costly to produce. Production costs of “The Irishman” were estimated to have been near $200 million.
The film marks the second major feature film deal for the Apple TV+ the company has made recently. Last week it was announced Apple TV+ has acquired the rights to the Tom Hanks World War II film Greyhound for $70 million.
In Greyhound, Hanks plays George Krause, a career officer given command of a Navy destroyer Greyhound during the Battle of the Atlantic. Krause must fight both his own self-doubts and the enemy as he tries to prove he deserves the command.
