Martin Scorsese was front and center at Paramount’s CinemaCon session Thursday to show off the teaser for his Killers of the Flower Moon. Caesars Palace Colosseum Theatre gave him a huge cheer.
“I designed to project this on a big screen. This is a big screen movie and that’s what we made,” said Scorsese.
“I could only make this picture with collaborators who are remarkable,” he said. He emphasized that the movie reps his sixth with Leonardo DiCaprio, and his 10th with Robert De Niro, and his first with both of the Oscar winners together.
Scorsese also gave a shoutout to Apple: “They’re real believers in cinema,” saying the pic couldn’t be made without the streamer’s support.
The pic, which clocks in at 3 hours and 26 minutes, is making its world premiere at Cannes next month.
“When this director is inspired by true stories, think about the results,” said Paramount Pictures boss Brian Robbins, who introduced Scorsese today.
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Adapted for the screen by Eric Roth and Scorsese from David Grann’s fact-based book, Killers of the Flower Moon is set in 1920s Oklahoma and depicts the serial murder of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation, a string of brutal crimes that came to be known as the Reign of Terror. The result was the formation of the FBI. Aside from DiCaprio and De Niro, the film stars Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion and Tantoo Cardinal.
How’s the teaser? Intense. Like a gangster movie smashed with a Western in an fierce story about the glass between oil-hungry men and the Osage nation in Oklahoma. It begins with DiCaprio telling a Osage young woman, “You have nice color skin. What color do you think that is?”
“My color,” she answers.
There’s shot of an Osage native covered in oil, De Niro telling DiCaprio, “the Earth should come to us!” Murders abound as the white man invades the land that didn’t belong to them. “Like buzzards circling our people,” says one of the Osage natives. “I outta kill these white men who killed my family,” adds another.
The pic hits theaters on October 6.