First Killers of the Flower Moon script took 4.5 hours to read

Killers of the Flower Moon is three-and-a-half hours long, but it was nearly longer. Martin Scorsese recently revealed the length of an earlier script.

The original length of the script

In a BFI Sights and Sound interview, Scorsese said that an earlier draft of the Killers of the Flower Moon script was “over two hundred pages” and would take “four-and-a-half hours just to read it.”

“So at one point we came to this place and we had a big reading of the script, with Eric Roth and Leo [DiCaprio], and some of the people from the office. It was interesting, we got halfway through and we realized, ultimately, it was going to take four-and-a-half hours just to read it,” Scorsese revealed. “It was now the middle of 2019, maybe. And so a week later, Leo came to me and said, ‘Where’s the heart of this story?' Because we were trying to get the script under control. And, by the way, Paramount Pictures loved the [existing] script, and they were willing to give us everything to make that script, but I didn’t feel right about it… And Leo said, ‘Where’s the heart…?' and I immediately said, ‘Well, Ernest and Mollie.'”

Instead, Martin Scorsese settled on a 206-minute film for Killers of the Flower Moon. Having seen it, it's hard to imagine what more could have been added. It's jam-packed with details and tangents, as he puts it.

Killers of the Flower Moon follows the conflict in the Osage Nation in the 1920s. Leonardo DiCaprio reunites with Scorsese for the sixth time, while Robert De Niro stars in his tenth Scorsese picture. Lily Gladstone also stars in the film, with Jesse Plemons, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, and Tantoo Cardinal playing supporting roles.