Leonardo DiCaprio improvised too much on the set of Killers of the Flower Moon

The star, at the origin of the revision of the script, was a little too involved on the set, laughs Martin Scorsese.

During an interview given to WSJ Magazine, Martin Scorsese looked into the disagreement between the executives of Paramount Pictures and the revised script of Killer of the Flower Moon.

Eric Roth And Martin Scorsese had initially planned to faithfully adapt David Grann’s book by addressing the point of view of the FBI agents coming to investigate the tragedies that revolved around the Osage people. The studio Paramount said he was ready to support the project, but things changed when Leonardo DiCaprio requested a revision of the script two years into the writing process.

“Eric Roth and I considered telling the story from the point of view of the bureau agents who come to investigate (…) After two years of working on the script, Leo came to me and asked: “Where is the heart of this story? I had had meetings and dinners with the Osages, and I said to myself: ‘This is the story‘. We felt like the real story wasn’t necessarily coming from outside, from the office, but rather from within, from Oklahoma” Scorsese said in a recent interview with the Irish Times.

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The Oscar-winning director admitted to New Yorker that he wasn’t very good at approaching films from a procedural point of view. Fact, Eric Roth And Martin Scorsese worked on the necessary modifications for the new scenario. The latter now focuses on the marriage between Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), drawn into his uncle’s greedy plot to despoil the Osage nation, and his Osage wife, Mollie (Lily Gladstone). In this new scenario, the FBI story became a subplot.

Scorsese recalls that Leonardo DiCaprio’s on-set discussions and dialogue improvisations were “endless, endless, endless” during production.

“So Bob didn’t want to talk anymore. Every once in a while, Bob and I would look at each other and roll our eyes a little. And we said (to Leo): ‘You don’t need this dialogue‘”.

When Apple stepped in to finance the film, worth $200 million, Paramount reversed its decision and regained its role as distributor.

Killers of the Flower Moon has been in theaters since on October 18, 2023.