Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon received a nine-minute standing ovation following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.
The film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone, screened on May 20 at Cannes to what Variety Co-Editor-in-Chief Ramin Setoodeh called "the biggest and loudest of #Cannes2023 so far."
Based on the best-selling book of the same name David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon is set in '20s Oklahoma and follows the serial murder of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation, a string of brutal crimes under mysterious circumstances that came to be known as the Reign of Terror. Scorsese directed and co-wrote the script with Dune and A Star is Born writer Eric Roth.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone land a 9-minute standing ovation for ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ — the biggest and loudest of #Cannes2023 so far. pic.twitter.com/1Gxp4cED1TMay 20, 2023
The ensemble cast also includes Brendan Fraser, Jesse Plemons, Lily Gladstone, and John Lithgow. DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart, the nephew of a powerful local rancher (De Niro), while Gladstone plays his Osage wife Mollie. Jesse Plemons stars as Tom White, the FBI agent in charge of investigating the murders.
The film has a runtime of 226 minutes, the second-longest movie of Scorsese's career behind The Irishman, which clocks in at 3 hours and 29 minutes.
Killers of the Flower Moon is set to have a limited theatrical release before becoming available for streaming on Apple TV Plus, which was the original plan before it was announced that Apple would invest millions into putting its original films in theaters.
For more, check out our list of the most exciting upcoming movies in 2023 and beyond, or, skip straight to the good stuff with our list of movie release dates.
