Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI is the third non-fiction book by American journalist David Grann. The book was released on April 18, 2017 by Doubleday. Time magazine listed Killers of the Flower Moon as one of its top ten non-fiction books of 2017. The book is currently planned for production as a film directed by Martin Scorsese.
Synopsis
The book investigates a series of murders of wealthy Osage people that took place in Osage County, Oklahoma in the early 1920s—after big oil deposits were discovered beneath their land. After the Osage Native Americans are awarded rights in court to the profits made from oil deposits found on their land, the Osage people prepare for receiving the wealth to which they believe they are legally entitled from sales of their oil deposits. However, a long and complex process of custodianship is imposed upon the distribution of the profits from the sales being made for very high profits and very few if any of the Osage people see any of this money. Still, they are the legal owners of the land and its profits, which is irksome to some of the administrators of the land who have a history of poor relations with the Osage people. Those elements hostile to the Osage people then decide that they could greatly simplify their profit mongering of the oil profits by eliminating those whom they consider to be operating as the "middle man" before they can abscond with the oil profits. The Osage people themselves are seen as the "middle man" and a complex plot is hatched and put into place to eliminate the Osage people inheriting this wealth from oil profits on a one-by-one basis by any means possible. Officially, the count of the murdered full-blood wealthy Osage native Americans reaches at least 20, but Grann suspects that hundreds more may have been killed because of their ties to oil. The book details the newly formed FBI's investigation of the murders, as well as the eventual trial and conviction of cattleman William Hale as the mastermind behind the plot.
Reception
Sean Woods of Rolling Stone wrote: "In his masterful new book...Grann chronicles a tale of murder, betrayal, heroism and a nation's struggle to leave its frontier culture behind and enter the modern world... Filled with almost mythic characters from our past – stoic Texas Rangers, corrupt robber barons, private detectives, and murderous desperadoes like the Al Spencer gang – Grann's story amounts to a secret history of the American frontier." A reviewer of Publishers Weekly stated "New Yorkerstaff writer Grann burnishes his reputation as a brilliant storyteller in this gripping true-crime narrative, which revisits a baffling and frightening—and relatively unknown—spree of murders occurring mostly in Oklahoma during the 1920s." Ed Vulliamy of The Guardian wrote "The genocide by white America against Native nations during the century leading up to Grann’s period is a metaphor for humanity’s decimation of the natural world which the Natives saw as sacred. Grann’s book is a timely and disturbing chapter in the original, terrible atrocity."
Film adaptation
Imperative Entertainment is said to have paid $5 million for the rights to adapt the book for filming, with Eric Roth set to write the screenplay. In July 2017, Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio were developing a film adaptation of the book. Filming was expected to start in spring 2019, though it ultimately did not take place. Robert De Niro and DiCaprio are also rumored to be in talks for roles in the film. In December 2019, Scorsese's recurring cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto announced that the shooting schedule for Killers of the Flower Moon would begin in March 2020. Variety magazine confirmed that DiCaprio and De Niro are set to star, with Dante Ferretti doing set design. In April 2020, it was reported that the potential cost of the film had ballooned to $200 million, and that Scorsese was in talks with Netflix or Apple Inc. to produce and distribute, with Paramount Pictures involved as a partner. On May 27, 2020, Apple bought the production and distribution rights to the film, which will be released theatrically by Paramount and streaming on Apple TV+.
