We’re all excited to see how Martin Scorsese‘s “Killers of The Flower Moon” does with global audiences and critics. It’s a film about a string of murders plagued by the oil-rich indigenous group, The Osage Nation, in the 1920s and based on real-life events that eventually drew the attention of the FBI. While the filmmaker has been circling and developing multiple future projects over the years, it looks like we have a better idea of what exactly is coming next and will have a connection to that upcoming release.

During an interview with French outlet Telerama, “Killers of The Flower Moon” author David Grann revealed that the next Scorsese film will be a feature adaption of his 1700s-set high-seas novel, “The Wager: A Story of Shipwreck, Mutiny & Murder.” And as we’d all assume, the director’s muse and Oscar-winner Leonardo DiCaprio is said to be taking the lead of the period drama. “The Wager” would mark the duo’s seventh film together and it had been previously reported to have landed financing from Apple back in 2022, where Scorsese recently made “Killers of The Flower Moon.” Other players involved include Imperative Entertainment, Sieklia Productions, and Appian Way Productions.

That aforementioned novel’s synopsis reads as follows:

Set in the 1740s, Wager’s story is set in motion when a patched-together boat with 30 emaciated men landed on the coast of Brazil. The men were the surviving crew of a British ship that was chasing a Spanish vessel and had crashed onto an island in South America’s Patagonia region. Their tales of surviving the seas and elements made them heroes. However, six months later another vessel, even more beat up than the first one, ended up on the coat of Chile, this one with three men. These new sailors charged that the other men were actually mutineers.

Given the project is going to feature multiple sailors, it is assumed we should end up seeing a bunch of actors from recent Scorsese films landing supporting roles alongside DiCaprio. I would be extremely shocked if English actors Stephen Graham (“The Irishman,” “Gangs of New York”), Andrew Garfield (“Silence”), and Jack Huston (“The Irishman,” “Boardwalk Empire”) didn’t show up in the pic or were approached during the casting process. “Oppenheimer” breakout Cillian Murphy might also be an actor Scorsese pursues, given the obvious awards chatter already surrounding the actor for the atomic bomb biopic and his previous work on “Dunkirk” and “In The Heart of The Sea” would mean he would already have experience with the film’s setting after making his own fair share of boat dramas.

However, given the ongoing strikes in Hollywood, it’s unclear when filming on “The Wager” is expected to take place given that prep and pre-production likely won’t be happening anytime soon. Other Scorsese projects that had been in the works include a biopic on Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia that had Jonah Hill (“The Wolf of Wall Street”) attached to star as the frontman and another long-gestating film about President Teddy Roosevelt that would star DiCaprio in that role.

SOURCE: DAVID GRANN VIA TELERAMA