Apple Original Films announced William Belleau (The Twilight Saga: Eclipse), Louis Cancelmi (The Irishman) and Grammy Award winning singer-songwriters Jason Isbell & Sturgill Simpson (The Hunt) have joined Martin Scorsese’s eagerly anticipated upcoming Apple TV+ drama, Killers of the Flower Moon, where they will appear alongside Academy-Award winner Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street).
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Killers of the Flower Moon is based on David Grann’s highly praised best-seller of the same name (pick it up here!) and depicts the serial murder of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma, a string of brutal crimes that came to be known as the Reign of Terror.
The quartet of actors join DiCaprio as Ernest Burkhart; Jesse Plemons (Fargo) as Tom White; Lily Gladstone (Billions) as Mollie Burkhart; Tantoo Cardinal (Wind River) as ‘Lizzie Q’ (Mollie’s mother); and Cara Jade Myers (This is Us), JaNae Collins (Fukry) and Jillian Dion (Legion) as Mollie’s sisters, Anna, Reta and Minnie.
Belleau will appear in the role of Henry Roan, an Osage rancher with close ties to the Burkhart family, while Cancelmi will portray Kelsie Morrison, a local hustler and friend of DiCaprio’s Burkhart. Isbell, who makes his acting debut in the film, plays Bill Smith, an adversary of Ernest Burkhart; and Sturgill Simpson is set to play infamous rodeo champion and bootlegger Henry Grammer.
There was no mention of Robert De Niro in the press release, though it was previously reported that he would co-star as William Hale. His status in the film remains unconfirmed at this time.
Scorsese will produce and direct Killers of the Flower Moon for Apple Studios from a screenplay by Eric Roth. Producing alongside Scorsese are Imperative Entertainment’s Dan Friedkin and Bradley Thomas and Appian Way Productions.
Killers of the Flower Moon will mark DiCaprio and Scorsese’s seventh collaboration together after working on multiple Oscar-nominated and winning films beginning with 2002’s Gangs of New York followed by 2004’s The Aviator, which was the actor’s first Oscar-nominated performance with the director, 2006’s The Departed, 2010’s Shutter Island, 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street and the 2015 short film The Audition.
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William Belleau was born in Williams Lake, British Columbia on Alkali Lake a small reservation also known to First Nations Secwepemc as “Esketemc” and has appeared in a variety of projects including Blackway starring Anthony Hopkins, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, The Killing, Netflix’s Frontier, Van Helsing and The Man in the High Castle. Cancelmi is best known for appearances in Boardwalk Empire, Blue Bloods and Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, for which he earned high praise and national attention. He’ll soon be seen in, The Eyes of Tammy Faye with Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield.
Isbell has established himself as one of the most respected and celebrated songwriters of his generation via his songs that underline the everyday human condition with thoughtful, heartfelt, and sometimes brutal honesty, having broken through in 2013 with the release of “Southeastern.” His next two albums, “Something More Than Free” (2015) and “The Nashville Sound” (2017), won Grammy Awards for Best Americana Album & Best American Roots Song. Isbell’s song “Maybe It’s Time” was featured in the 2019 reboot of A Star Is Born.
Sturgill Simpson was recently seen in Melina Matsoukas’s powerful film Queen and Slim for Universal Pictures and Makeready, and Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die, for which he wrote and performed the theme song. Simpson made his acting debut in the CBS All Access series $1 from Jason Mosberg and Craig Zobel.
(Photo Credits: Getty Images)
