Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese are teaming up again, this time to tackle an adaptation of David Grann’s upcoming non-fiction book, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder.
Apple Original Films has secured the rights to the book, which is due out in April 2023. The project reteams the key actors and companies behind the recently completed adaptation of Grann’s true crime tome, Killers of the Flower Moon.
Scorsese is attached to direct with DiCaprio to star in Wager. The producers are Dan Friedkin and Bradley Thomas of Imperative Entertainment, Scorsese through Sikelia Productions and DiCaprio and his partner Jennifer Davisson through their Appian Way Productions.
Richard Plepler will executive produce through his Eden Productions banner.
Set in the 1740s, Wager’s story is set in motion when a rigged ship with 30 emaciated men lands on the coast of Brazil. The men were the surviving crew of a British ship that had been chasing a Spanish ship and had crashed on an island in the Patagonia region of South America. Their stories of surviving the seas and the elements made them heroes.
However, six months later another boat, even more battered than the first, ended up off the coast of Chile, this one with three men. These new sailors charged that the other men were actually mutineers.
As accusations and counter-accusations flew, the British Admiralty set up a special trial to uncover the truth of what exactly happened on the island, exposing a story not just of a captain and crew struggling to survive while fighting against some of the most extreme elements on the planet. , but also fighting against his own human nature.
DiCaprio stars with Robert De Niro in Flower Moon, which Scorsese directed for Apple. DiCaprio, Scorsese and Imperative produced the period crime drama, set in 1920s Oklahoma and depicting the serial killing of members of the oil-rich Osage Nation. The film is in production although a release date has not yet been set.
DiCaprio and Scorsese are one of cinema’s great pairings, and in the last 25 years the two have worked together on six films that have spawned multiple Oscars and box office hits. The list includes Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island and The Wolf of Wall Street, with Flower Moon next.
In addition to Flower Moon, Grann’s previously adapted works include 2016’s The Lost City of Z, produced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment, and the 2018 Robert Redford drama The Old Man & the Gun. His non-fiction book The White Darkness is being developed by Soo Hugh (Pachinko, The Terror) as an Apple Original limited series starring Tom Hiddleston.
Imperative, meanwhile, currently has its acclaimed limited series Black Bird, starring Taron Egerton, running weekly on Apple TV+.
An earlier version misstated the release date of the book behind this project.