What Is Leonardo DiCaprio's New Movie? Killers Of The Flower Moon Explained
Leonardo DiCaprio is teaming up with Martin Scorsese once again in the movie Killers of the Flower Moon – and here’s what you need to know about it. Leonardo DiCaprio has become one of the most beloved and respected actors of his generation thanks to the variety of characters he has played, and he caught the attention of critics, viewers, and filmmakers with his role as Arnie Grape in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. What followed were movies from different genres that allowed him to show his range, as were The Basketball Diaries, The Quick and the Dead, and Romeo + Juliet.
DiCaprio’s big break, however, came in 1997 in James Cameron’s Titanic, where he played Jack Dawson, a young man who falls in love with Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) aboard the title ship, but they are from different social classes, something unacceptable back in 1912. Titanic boosted DiCaprio’s career and made him a widely-known name in the film industry, opening many doors for him. After Titanic came projects like The Man in the Iron Mask, The Beach, and Catch Me If You Can. In 2002, DiCaprio joined Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, marking the first of many collaborations between them.
Now, years after their last collaboration in The Wolf of Wall Street, released in 2013, DiCaprio and Scorsese are joining forces again in the movie Killers of the Flower Moon, a Western crime drama also starring Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, and Lily Gladstone. But what is Killers of the Flower Moon about and what is Leonardo DiCaprio’s role in it?
Killers Of The Flower Moon is based on the nonfiction book Killers Of The Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann. The book follows the investigation of a series of murders of wealthy Osage people that took place in Osage County, Oklahoma, in the early 1920s after oil deposits were discovered in their land. As the Osage people prepared to receive the wealth to which they were legally entitled from sales of the oil deposits, the administrators of the land – who had a history of bad relations with the Osage people – decided they could simplify their profit mongering of the oil profits by eliminating those they considered operated as the “middle man”: the Osage. These people then came up with a complex plot to eliminate the Osage people and take their wealth, with the official count of murders being at least 20, though Grann suspected there were many more.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart, the nephew of William Hale, played by Robert De Niro, the main antagonist of the story. DiCaprio was originally eyed for a different role, as the character of Tom White, the lead FBI agent in the case was written for him, but he asked to have his role changed to Ernest Burkhart. Jesse Plemons was then cast as Tom White and DiCaprio as Ernest, who was a key player in Hale’s plans to take over the Osage people’s wealth.