Scorsese’s ‘Flower Moon’ Recruits Jack Fisk, Production Designer for Lynch, Malick, and PTA

Martin Scorsese fans have known for quite awhile the filmmaker’s upcoming “Killers of the Flower Moon” will mark a reunion with longtime cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (“The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Silence,” “The Irishman”), but now comes word that “Flower Moon” will bring a new key creative into the Scorsese fold for the first time: Jack Fisk. Apple confirms with IndieWire that Fisk is on board for the upcoming Western drama, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, and Lily Gladstone.

The pairing of Scorsese and Fisk is notable, given that the production designer is a frequent collaborator of David Lynch, Terrence Malick, and Paul Thomas Anderson. Fisk has earned two Oscar nominations for Best Production Design, the first for Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” and the second for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “The Revenant.” Other Fisk projects include “Badlands,” “The Thin Red Line,” “Mulholland Drive,” “The New World,” “The Tree of Life,” “The Master,” and “To the Wonder,” among other titles. “Flower Moon” will mark Fisk’s first feature film job since Malick’s 2017 drama “Song to Song.”

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Based on David Grann’s non-fiction book, “Killers of the Flower Moon” centers around an FBI investigation into a string of murders in the Osage Nation. Ranchers were killing off Osage members in order to gain possession of the profitable oil on Osage land. Plemons is starring as FBI agent Tom White. DiCaprio is taking on the role of Ernest Burkhart, the nephew of a powerful local rancher who becomes a suspect in the Osage killings. De Niro is playing the rancher, while “Certain Women” favorite Gladstone is starring as Ernest’s wife, Mollie Kyle. Additional roles will be played by Tantoo Cardinal, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, William Belleau, Louis Cancelmi, Jason Isbell, and Sturgill Simpson.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” is being backed by Apple, with Paramount handling worldwide distribution. Scorsese has been in Oklahoma prepping for production for much of 2021, meeting with Osage Nation members alongside DiCaprio in late February to ensure the film’s script will treat its Osage characters, setting, and themes with respect. In recent days, photos of crew building train tracks for the movie surfaced on social media. Fisk is no stranger to constructing historical towns from scratch; such was the case for “There Will Be Blood.”

“We were running around in the desert of Texas creating this town and putting sticks in the ground,” Fisk once told Criterion. “It was a real creative process and just a lot of fun. [Paul Thomas Anderson] had done so much research in writing the script and he shared that with me, so we were coming to the project with the same background of research. You feel a little bit like God and a little bit like a kid, like, Let’s put the town there! It was just playful.”

Here’s hoping “Killers of the Flower Moon” with Scorsese proves to be a similar experience. Filming is set to begin in May and run through late summer.

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