KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

Prod Co: Imperative Entertainment, Appian Way

Dates: Aiming June-July 2020
Location: Oklahoma
Budget: TBD

Studio Executive: Alex Jackson

Writer (Current): Eric Roth

Source Material By: David Grann

Producer: Dan Friedkin, Bradley Thomas, Martin Scorsese, Leonardo Dicaprio

Director: Martin Scorsese

Casting Director: Ellen Lewis, Rene Haynes

Cast: Talent: Leonardo Dicaprio [DAVID GRANN: Set], Robert De Niro [WILLIAM K. HALE: Set]

Logline: Based on the upcoming novel by David Grann. The true story of the investigation into the widespread murder of Osage Indians in the 1920s, and the rise of the FBI. By 1923 many Osage Indians were multi-millionaires because of the mineral rights they possessed on what had been thought to be worthless land. But soon they started dying in mysterious and sinister ways. Someone was killing
them for the oil leases and it took the newly formed FBI under J Edgar Hoover to investigate and solve it.

Roles:

[DAVID GRANN]
Lead Male (40 - 50)
The author and narrator of Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann is a journalist who finds himself transfixed by the story of the Osage Reign of Terror and by the fact that-despite its brutality, its integral role in the formation of the FBI, and its lessons about the forces of entitlement, greed, and corruption
which have governed the fraught and imbalanced relationship between Native Americans and whites since settlers first arrived in the new world-many people living in America today have never even heard of what happened in Osage County between
1918 and the mid-1930s. Grann explores themes of racism and greed, family, legacy, and trauma as he delves deeper into the story of the Reign of Terror and reconstructs through a combination of imagination and historical record the lives,
thoughts, hopes, and fears of Tom White, Mollie Burkhart, J. Edgar Hoover, William K. Hale, and more. He also explores the fight against the warped annals of history for the truth-all the while coming to terms with the profound and upsetting discovery that the FBI and others actually attempted to cover up and lesson the devastating effects of the Osage murders, shortening the timeline of the Reign of Terror and leaving unsolved hundreds of suspicious Osage deaths.
Set Leonardo Dicaprio

[TOM WHITE]
Lead Male (30 - 40)
Tom White, an imposing former Texas Ranger, is in 1925 sent by J. Edgar Hoover's bureau of investigation to look into the Osage murders and hopefully unearth the perpetrator-or perpetrators. Throughout the text, Grann highlights White's
lawfulness, decency, and steadfast pursuit of the truth in contrast to the deep, pervasive greed and corruption which have taken hold of Osage County. Ultimately, though White succeeds in securing the conviction of William K. Hale, the mastermind behind many Osage murders, White finds that the
corruption which has spread through Osage County precludes him from solving many other murders-and prevents him from stopping those still to come.

[MOLLIE BURKHART]
Lead Female (20 - 25)
One of the text's three major protagonists, Mollie is an Osage woman who soon becomes a "marked woman"-the final intended victim in a vast and evil conspiracy to consolidate and strip away her oil-rich family's vast wealth. Mollie's struggles
to honor the traditions of her tribe's past while conforming to the more-or-less forced assimilation policies which consumed her and her sisters' childhoods forms the emotional crux of a large
part of the book's first third. Grann uses Mollie's mounting sense of dread as her family members are picked off one by one to heighten the sense of injustice and horror which characterized
the Osage Reign of Terror.

[WILLIAM K. HALE]
Lead Male (40 - 50) White
A well-loved figure in Osage County who is even known by the moniker "King of the Osage Hills." A former cattleman who has risen to prominence over the years and become a deputy sheriff and a respected man about town, William K. Hale is eventually revealed to be the cruel mastermind behind several murders of members of the Osage tribe-namely those of Henry Roan, Anna Brown, Rita Smith, and Bill Smith, along with the ordered
killings of several of his own hired "guns" including Asa Kirby and Henry Grammer. Hale's power, influence, and ability to incite feelings of greed and entitlement maneuvered many prominent lawyers, bankers, doctors, and lawmen into his service-he even roped Ernest and Bryan Burkhart into his evil
schemes. As Tom White begins to uncover the depths of his power, he worries that Hale is invincible and will never be brought to justice. Hale is ultimately convicted alongside his co-conspirator John Ramsey in the murder of Henry Roan-though as both Tom White and David Grann come to realize, Hale was responsible for the deaths of countless Osage for which he was never brought to justice.
Set Robert De Niro

[ANNA BROWN]
Lead Female (25)
Mollie's older sister Anna, the eldest of their siblings, is a fun-loving, fast-drinking divorcee when she is murdered in cold blood in May of 1921. Her death becomes one of the first officially-recognized murders of the Osage Reign of Terror, and one of the reasons that federal investigators come to Oklahoma to look into the series of morbid and violent crimes.

[RITA SMITH]
Lead Female (23 - 27)
Mollie's sister, a woman so "blind[ly]" in love with her violent husband Bill that she stands by him and refuses to leave him even when he physically assaults her. Many suspect that Bill has married Rita for "sordid [financial] gain," but when the two of them are murdered in their bed in March of 1923, they both become victims of the Reign of Terror

[BILL SMITH]
Lead Male (23 - 27)
Mollie's sister Rita Smith's husband, and an occasionally violent man. He was previously married to Minnie, but when she died of a mysterious wasting illness in 1917, he remarried Rita. Bill and
Rita are murdered in their bed when an explosive device goes off beneath their house in the early morning hours of March 10, 1923.

[SCOTT MATHIS]
Lead Male (30 - 40)
The proprietor of a large general store, the Big Hill Trading Company-and the guardian of Anna and Lizzie's financial affairs. He is eventually revealed to be "a crook and evidently in the power of Hale," and Grann learns that out of the nine Osage wards whose affairs Mathis "guarded," seven turned up dead-and at least two were known to have been murdered.

[BLACKIE THOMPSON]
Lead Male (30 - 40)
An infamous outlaw.

[JOHN BURGER]
Lead Male (30 - 40)
An investigator for the FBI.