Jesse Plemons to Star in Martin Scorsese’s ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’
Plemons will lead a cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro.
www.hollywoodreporter.com
Jesse Plemons has joined Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro in Killers of the Flower Moon, the big-budget thriller Martin Scorsese is directing for Apple.
The casting is a major coup for Plemons, who for years has anchored productions or stole scenes with his performances in supporting roles. And it coincides with him being wanted for lead roles not just by Scorsese, with whom he worked on 2019's The Irishman, but also by Jordan Peele, who had offered him the male lead in his latest thriller.
The hope was for Plemons to do both but scheduling ultimately could not be worked out. Peele's movie is to shoot early summer while Flower Moon shoots from May to late summer.
Regardless, Plemons now finds himself in a role was originally to have been played by DiCaprio before the Oscar-winner segued to a secondary lead.
The script, written by Eric Roth and based on the David Grann bestseller, is set in 1920s Oklahoma, against the backdrop of 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.
Plemons will play Tom White, the lead FBI agent investigating the murders. Lily Gladstone will play the role of Mollie Burkhart, an Osage married to Ernest Burkhart, who is nephew of a powerful local rancher. DiCaprio is the nephew while De Niro is the strong-handed rancher.