60 Fun Facts About Killers of the Flower Moon

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) was how many feature-film collaborations between Scorsese and DiCaprio?

It was also the tenth Scorsese film with De Niro; the three of them had worked together only once before, on the 2015 short The Audition.

Who co-wrote the Killers of the Flower Moon screenplay with Martin Scorsese?

Their first draft, told from the investigators' point of view, ran nearly 200 pages before DiCaprio asked where the heart of the story was.

Which New Yorker staff writer wrote the 2017 nonfiction book the film is based on?

His earlier book The Lost City of Z was also filmed; Time listed the Osage book among its top ten nonfiction titles of 2017.

What is the subtitle of the book Killers of the Flower Moon?

The book gives far more space than the film to J. Edgar Hoover and the young Bureau of Investigation using the case as a showcase.

The "flower moon" of the title is the traditional name for the full moon of which month?

The Old Farmer's Almanac began publishing the tribal names for each full moon in the 1930s.

The book's title came from "Wi'-gi-e", a poem in Mollie Kyle's voice by which Osage poet?

The author tracked her down and she sent him the poem, part of which is printed in the book.

Ernest Burkhart, DiCaprio's character, is what relation to De Niro's William Hale?

Ernest returns from World War I to live on Hale's ranch with his brother Byron, and Hale steers him toward marrying Mollie Kyle.

Which role, eventually played by Jesse Plemons, was originally written for DiCaprio?

DiCaprio pushed to play Ernest Burkhart instead, and Scorsese and his co-writer rebuilt the script around the Osage perspective and the Burkhart marriage.

De Niro's William Hale was known locally by what nickname?

A rancher and reserve deputy sheriff, he posed as the tribe's benefactor while arranging the deaths of Mollie's family.

Lily Gladstone was raised on which reservation in Montana?

She is of Piegan Blackfeet and Nez Perce descent on her father's side, and decided to act at age five after wanting to be an Ewok.

Casting director Ellen Lewis tipped Scorsese off to Lily Gladstone by showing him which 2016 film?

Her role as a lonely rancher in Kelly Reichardt's film had already won her the Los Angeles Film Critics Association's supporting-actress prize.

Lily Gladstone won the role after a Zoom call with Scorsese in which they discussed what?

DiCaprio endorsed her after his own video call, and the Osage Nation then gave its approval too.

Lily Gladstone won the Golden Globe and SAG Award for Best Actress but lost the Oscar to whom?

The winner said she "blacked out" in shock; Gladstone had been the first Indigenous American actress ever nominated in the category.

How many Academy Award nominations did Killers of the Flower Moon receive?

It won none of them, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor for De Niro.

Which Scorsese film, like Gangs of New York, was shut out at the Oscars despite 10+ nominations?

Billboard called the repeat "hard to explain" for a director it described as a legend.

At 81, Scorsese became the oldest Best Director nominee ever, eclipsing which director?

It was his tenth directing nomination, more than anyone alive at the time.

Which longtime Scorsese editor earned a record ninth Best Film Editing nomination for the film?

She and Scorsese publicly defended the three-and-a-half-hour running time against critics.

Who composed the score for Killers of the Flower Moon, his last before his death two months before release?

The film is dedicated to him; it was his eleventh collaboration with Scorsese and brought a posthumous Oscar nomination for Best Original Score.

The film's composer, formerly of The Band, had heritage from which two Indigenous nations?

Critics described his score as old-timey, bluesy and percussive, and it sits alongside 1920s pop and Native American songs.

Who was the film's cinematographer, a Scorsese regular since The Wolf of Wall Street?

He shot mostly on film and, as the story darkens, switched to the harsh, desaturated Technicolor ENR process.

Scorsese cited which director's Midsommar and Beau Is Afraid as inspirations for the slower pacing?

Paul Thomas Anderson, rumoured to have done uncredited rewrites, said he had merely offered his thoughts.

Scorsese himself appears on screen in the film's final scene as what?

His co-writer wrote the closing tribute to Mollie, and Scorsese read it himself because he felt he could not direct another actor to do it.

Which rock musician appears as an actor in the closing radio-drama scene?

The scene's bandleader is played by real jazz-revival bandleader Vince Giordano.

Country singer Jason Isbell plays which character in the film?

His character marries two of Mollie's sisters in turn; the real man survived the blast for four days and gave a statement naming his suspected killers.

Brendan Fraser plays W. S. Hamilton, who is what in the story?

He tries to persuade Ernest to claim he was tortured into confessing and to recant.

John Lithgow plays Peter Leaward, who fills what role in the trials?

Lithgow and Fraser were the last major additions to the cast, joining in August 2021 while filming was already under way.

Tantoo Cardinal plays Lizzie Q, who is what to Mollie?

In the film, her ancestors welcome her to the afterlife as she dies; in reality Lizzie's death was first put down to old age.

Hale orders Ernest to poison the medicine Mollie takes for which condition?

Ernest shows the same symptoms after ingesting some himself; agents get Mollie to hospital, where repeated poisoning is confirmed.

In the film, Mollie travels to Washington to plead for help from which president?

The scene follows the killing of an Osage representative sent to lobby Congress.

Ernest finally agrees to testify against his uncle after his daughter dies of which illness?

Mollie leaves him anyway when he refuses to admit he poisoned her.

Which real 1921 event, referenced in the film, deepens the Osage's fear of white violence?

Lizzie and the Osage council blame white residents for the deaths and urge the tribe to fight back.

Which famous real-life private detective, played by Gary Basaraba, does Mollie hire in the film?

In the film he is badly beaten by Ernest and Byron; the real Burns went on to run the Bureau of Investigation before Hoover.

According to the film's coda, in what year did the real Mollie die?

Her obituary said she was buried with her parents, sisters and daughter, and made no mention of the murders.

Roughly what was the film's production budget, reportedly the most ever spent on a shoot in Oklahoma?

It grossed $158.8 million worldwide; Variety estimated a conventional release would have needed $500-600 million to break even.

Which company co-financed the film and streamed it from January 2024?

Scorsese went to the streamers after the original studio balked at the budget; a request from the Criterion Collection for a disc release was at first declined.

Which studio handled the film's theatrical release?

It opened to $23 million in North America, the best start of any Scorsese-De Niro film, beating Cape Fear's $10.2 million from 1991.

How long was the standing ovation at the film's Cannes premiere?

The U.S. premiere at Lincoln Center that September had no cast in attendance because of the SAG-AFTRA strike.

On its opening weekend, the film was No. 2 at the global box office behind which Indian film?

The Vijay action film opened the same weekend; a year later, Oscar buzz pushed the Scorsese film back into 941 theatres.

Some cinemas in Denmark, Germany and elsewhere angered the studios by doing what to the film?

The distributors said this violated their contracts and moved to stop it.

During filming in spring 2021, De Niro flew back to New York after injuring what?

The injury happened off-set, and his remaining scenes were shot in June without delaying the schedule.

Scorsese cast Osage actors in at least how many roles, on top of hundreds of tribal members as extras?

Around 200 Osage people were consulted before shooting, and Osage crew members worked on the production.

In which Osage County seat, where much of the film was shot, did Scorsese first meet the tribe's principal chief?

More than 50 locations were used across Osage and Washington counties, mixing real buildings with built sets.

The Kyle family murders were dramatised decades earlier in which 1959 James Stewart film?

Stewart played a composite agent named Chip Hardesty; Scorsese considered ending his film with the shooting of a similar Hollywood movie before settling on the radio drama.

Newspapers of the day gave the wave of Osage deaths what name?

At least 60 wealthy full-blood Osage were reported killed between 1918 and 1931, and later research suggests the true toll could be in the hundreds.

The Osage were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma in the 1870s from which state?

Crucially, the tribe kept the mineral rights under its new reservation communally, which is why oil made every member with a headright rich.

In what year was oil discovered on the Osage reservation?

By 1923 the tribe was taking in more than $30 million a year and was called the richest group of people per head on earth.

A 1921 law required court-appointed guardians for Osage members with at least what share of Osage blood?

Courts appointed local white lawyers and businessmen, and one woman was declared incompetent because her savings suggested she did not understand money.

Local authorities initially ruled that Anna Brown's 1921 death in a ravine was caused by what?

An autopsy found a bullet in the back of her head; her cousin Charles Whitehorn's shot body was found the same day.

Which petty criminal admitted shooting Anna Brown and testified that Hale had asked him to do it?

His life sentence was overturned in 1931 because he had been promised immunity; he died in a shootout with police six years later.

Mollie's sister Reta and her husband died in March 1923 when their Fairfax home was destroyed by what?

Investigators later found the device had contained five gallons of nitroglycerin; a servant, Nettie Brookshire, was also killed.

Hale fraudulently made himself beneficiary of Henry Roan's life insurance, worth how much?

Because Roan was killed on the reservation, his murder was a federal crime, which is what let the Bureau of Investigation bring Hale to trial.

Hitman John Ramsey confessed that Hale promised him a new car and how much cash for killing Henry Roan?

Ramsey said they drank whiskey together on a road outside Fairfax before he shot Roan in the head; he later tried to blame a man named Curly Johnson.

Oilman Barney McBride, who went to Washington on the Osage's behalf in 1922, was found dead how?

He had received a telegram warning him to be careful on the night he arrived; an attacker tied a sack over his head and stabbed him more than twenty times.

Attorney W. W. Vaughan vanished from a train after visiting which poisoned Osage man in hospital?

Bigheart, son of the last hereditary chief, had documents naming the killers; they were gone when Vaughan's body was found beside the tracks with his skull crushed.

After being paroled in the late 1930s, Ernest Burkhart was sent back to prison in 1941 for what crime?

He and an accomplice stole $7,000 in valuables from the home of his former sister-in-law; Oklahoma's governor eventually pardoned him in 1966.

In what year were William Hale and John Ramsey paroled from their life sentences, over Osage protests?

Hale reportedly said afterwards that they would all be rich if Ernest had kept his mouth shut; he died in 1962.

In 1925 Congress ruled that headrights from Osage of half or more ancestry could no longer be inherited by whom?

The federal government kept managing the leases, and in 2011 settled the tribe's mismanagement lawsuit for $380 million.

Which company won the 2016 bidding war for the film rights to David Grann's book?

It paid $5 million for the rights; Scorsese and DiCaprio attached themselves the following year, though shooting did not begin until 2021.

Which body named Killers of the Flower Moon the Best Film of 2023?

The American Film Institute also placed it in its top ten of the year, though it went home empty-handed on Oscar night.

Roughly how much did Killers of the Flower Moon gross worldwide?

Against a $200 million-plus budget the theatrical run was a loss, before the film moved to Apple TV+ in January 2024.