Jesse Ple­mons joins Mar­tin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon

He’s worked with such film­mak­ers as Paul Thomas Ander­son, Steven Spiel­berg, and Char­lie Kauf­man. He’s got a plum role in this season’s hottest new release, Judas and the Black Mes­si­ah. He has a Jane Cam­pi­on movie in the can, await­ing release. And now, Jesse Ple­mons will add one more dis­tinc­tion to his estimable CV with every actor’s dream: the lead­ing role in a Mar­tin Scors­ese movie.

Though Ple­mons popped up briefly in 2019’s The Irish­man, a report last night from Dead­line announced that he’ll move to the fore for Killers of the Flower Moon, the fol­low-up fea­ture from Felli­ni devo­tee and not­ed ene­my of ​“con­tent” Mar­tin Scors­ese. Leonar­do DiCaprio, the pre­vi­ous hold­er of this gig, gra­cious­ly stepped down but will remain in the movie’s cast, albeit in a sup­port­ing role. (Marty’s oth­er gold­en boy, Robert De Niro, will also appear in the film.)

The crime west­ern revolves around a string of mur­ders in 1920s Okla­homa, per­pet­u­at­ed against the natives of the Osage Nation by nefar­i­ous con­cerns eager to get their mitts on the vast reserves of nat­ur­al oil sit­ting under their land. Ple­mons will play the lead inves­ti­ga­tor from the then-nascent FBI, come to town to get to the bot­tom of what was then known as the ​“Reign of Terror.”

His cast­ing comes on the heels of an addi­tion no less promis­ing: Lily Glad­stone, the actress of Black­feet and Nez Per­cé her­itage who’s made such a superb impres­sion in her work with Kel­ly Reichardt, will take the sig­nif­i­cant role of one Mol­lie Burkhart. A mem­ber of the Osage, she’s mar­ried to the nephew (that’s DiCaprio) of a ranch­er who con­trols the com­mu­ni­ty (that’s De Niro).

There’s noth­ing like a good Scors­esian peri­od epic, a mode he hasn’t been in since 2016’s Silence took him through the wilds of 17^th-cen­tu­ry Japan. More excit­ing still? It’s the first time the mas­ter will tack­le a West­ern, an odds-on grand slam for such a ded­i­cat­ed stu­dent of Ford and the oth­er god­fa­thers of the oater.