#John Lithgow Joins Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon Cast

3rd Rock from the Sun star John Lithgow has now added his name to the already stellar castlist for director Martin Scorsese’s upcoming western Killers of the Flower Moon. The two-time Oscar nominee and two-time Golden Globe winner will play Prosecutor Leaward alongside the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, and Brendan Fraser, whose role was announced last week.

Killers of the Flower Moon will be led by Jesse Plemons as Tom White, the lead FBI agent investigating the mysterious murders of several members of the Osage tribe. The grisly crimes became known as the Reign of Terror, with Killers of the Flower Moon taking inspiration from the critically acclaimed book “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI” by David Grann. The movie will therefore tell the story of 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. This sparks a major F.B.I. investigation involving J. Edgar Hoover.
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Academy Award winner Leonardo DiCaprio is set to play Ernest Burkhart, the nephew to fellow Academy Award winner Robert De Niro, with the Raging Bull star playing William Hale, “King of the Osage Hills,” the man responsible for most of the murders. Lily Gladstone of Certain Women and Billions fame will star as Mollie Burkhart, an Osage married to DiCaprio’s character.

Brendan Fraser recently added his beloved presence to the picture, with the actor due to portray lawyer WS Hamilton. The rest of the supporting cast includes the likes of Tantoo Cardinal, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion, William Belleau, Michael Abbott Jr., Pat Healy, Louis Cancelmi, and Jason Isbell as Bill Smith.

Killers of the Flower Moon sees Martin Scorsese at the helm, with Forrest Gump and The Good Shepherd writer Eric Roth having penned the script. While the story sounds more like a crime thriller than a western, Roth has assured fans of the genre that the movie will carry a lot of the tropes and sensibilities inherent in classic western examples. “I mean, people will be in suits and things because it’s 1921,” he explained. “It’s during the prohibition, but the ethos I think is very Western. And also, I think Western justice, about how they said that you couldn’t find 12 white men to convict a white man of killing a native American. You’d have a better chance of having them convicted of kicking a dog. And that’s kind of the feeling on that.”

“And then also, you have these incredible people, the Osage family that a character comes and marries into, and who’s a villain and who isn’t,” Roth continued. “And then into that comes a kind of heroic guy – Tom White, his name was, who Jesse Plemons is playing – who was in the Texas Rangers, and you couldn’t get more Western than that.”

As for John Lithgow, he will soon return to one of his most acclaimed roles, resurrecting The Trinity Killer in the upcoming revival of Showtime’s Dexter.

Killers of the Flower Moondoes not yet have a release date set, but is set to be produced by Scorsese’s Sikelia Productions and DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions and distributed by Paramount Pictures and Apple TV+. This news comes to us courtesy of Deadline.

Topics: Killers of the Flower Moon