Get ready for a long ride.
Martin Scorsese’s official term Killers of the flower moon lasts three hours and 26 minutes, insiders confirm. The Western crime drama from Apple Original Films, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone, is one of the longest Hollywood films of modern times, according to Comscore data.
Scorsese’s last film The Irishman was actually three minutes longer (three hours and 29 minutes), but the 2019 Netflix movie didn’t get a full theatrical release because it was made primarily for the streaming service.
Killers of the flower moon is another proposal. Apple is working with Paramount to give Scorsese’s high-profile film a traditional run in cinemas around the world before it becomes available on Apple TV+ at a date yet to be determined. (Hollywood is buzzing with it Killer‘s length after reports it ran closer to four hours.)
For every distributor, a long film means fewer showtimes.
Yet three of the four highest-grossing films of all time at the global box office have a running time of three hours or more. No 1 is avatar (two hours and 41 minutes), followed by Avengers: Endgame (three hours and two minutes); Avatar: The way of the water (three hours and 12 minutes); And Titanic (three hours and 14 minutes), according to Comscore.
James Cameron – who directed Titanic and the two avatar movies — is known for making longer films, as is Scorsese, whose 2013 Oscar nominee The Wolf of Wall Street ran for three hours (not to mention Irish).
The running time of a movie includes credits, which can be as long as 10 minutes.
Flower Moon reunites Scorsese with DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. The film will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival next month and will hit theaters in mid-October.
Adapted by Scorsese and screenwriter Eric Roth from David Grann’s best-selling 2017 non-fiction book, the film centers on an FBI investigation into a series of murders of the Osage people that took place in Oklahoma in the early 1920s. It became known as the Reign of Terror after oil was discovered on tribal lands.
DiCaprio, in his sixth collaboration with Scorsese, plays Ernest Burkhart, the nephew of rancher William Hale (De Niro). Gladstone, who is of Blackfeet and Nimíipuu descent, first broke out in Kelly Reichardt’s 2017 film Certain womenplays Mollie Kyle, an Osage woman who has inherited an oil fortune. The cast also includes Jesse Plemons as Tom White, a former Texas Ranger investigating the murders, and Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion, and Tantoo Cardinal.
deadline reported first Killers of the flower moonthe term.
