Scorsese to film Killers of the Flower Moon in Oklahoma

Veteran US director Martin Scorsese will shoot his native American drama Killers of the Flower Moon, starring De Niro and Leonardo Di Caprio, in Oklahoma next Spring and Summer.

Backed by Paramount Pictures, the film is based on the critically acclaimed true crime book about the 1920s Osage reign of terror in which tribal members were murdered for their oil rights, and the subsequent FBI investigation.

Scorsese had promised Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear and other representatives of the Osage Nation that the film would shoot in Oklahoma.  Now the production team are conducting open casting calls for Osage and other native American men and women to appear in the film as speaking actors or background extras.

Another project set to shoot in Oklahoma, and currently doing casting calls, is Academy Award-winning writer-director Tom McCarthy's Stillwater, starring Matt Damon and Oscar nominee Abigail Breslin.

Backed by Participant Media, the film will see Damon play an Oklahoma roughneck who travels to France to aid his estranged daughter, who has been arrested for a murder she says she didn't commit.

"This is the dream coming to life ... and the fruits of the labor for everybody from the crews to the vendors to our new administration to the legislators and everywhere in between, getting some of these projects here," said Tava Maloy Sofsky, director of the Oklahoma Film + Music Office.

Sofsky said Oklahoma has hosted many talented filmmakers and actors over the past few years, but star-studded projects like these are helping to boost the profile and maintain the momentum of the state's burgeoning film industry.

Homepage image: Scorsese and De Niro. Credit: WireImage