Martin Scorsese has officially set his next film with Leonardo DiCaprio after mulling over several projects.
Since Killers of the Flower Moon was released in 2023, the Taxi Driver filmmaker, 82, has been linked to numerous projects, including adaptations of The Wager, Devil in the White City andThe Life of Jesus, as well as a long-gestating Frank Sinatra biopic.
The filmmaker will instead direct an adaptation of What Happens at Night, a 2023 ghost story by Peter Cameron.
It follows an American couple, set to be played by DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, who travel to Europe to adopt a baby.
However, upon checking into their hotel, where “nothing is as it seems”, they face increasingly baffling obstacles that prevent them from claiming the baby from the orphanage
Scorsese was originally attached to produce the project, but he will now direct the psychological drama that has shades of 2010’s Shutter Island. The script was written by playwright Patrick Marber.
DiCaprio, 50, will star in the film after passing on La La Land director Damien Chazelle’s Evel Knievel biopic, and shooting is scheduled to start in January.
It’ll mark their seventh time working together – and will also reunite DiCaprio with his Don’t Look Up co-star Lawrence.
In 2024, Scorsese responded to retirement rumours, saying: “I’m not saying goodbye to cinema at all. I still have more films to make, and I hope God gives me the strength to make them.”
Scorsese’s adaptation of David Grann’s The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder has been pushed down the list of projects.
Both Scorsese and DiCaprio obtained the rights to the novel, which was published in 2023. The film tells the story of survivors of a shipwreck who, six months after returning home, are accused by three men of mutinying their ship.
His fictional retelling of the religious figure’s life, adapted from Silence author Shūsaku Endō’s 1973 novel A Life of Jesus, has also had the brakes put on despite claims that Andrew Garfield and Miles Teller were being lined up to play the lead role.
Meanwhile, a biopic about “My Way” crooner Sinatra is yet to be approved by his estate, while an adaptation of Devil in the White City has also been put on the back burner.
Nine years ago, Scorsese started putting plans in motion to adapt Erik Larsen’s best-selling nonfiction thriller, which DiCaprio bought the rights to in 2010.
The brakes were put on the film adaptation when it was announced the book would be adapted by Tár director Todd Field for TV instead, with Keanu Reeves in the lead role.
However, this adaptation never came to fruition and the Scorsese film adaptation was rumoured to be nearing production.
Set in 1893, the chilling book weaves together the tales of two men: Daniel H Burnham, an architect and urban designer who was behind the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, and Henry Holmes, a cunning con artist, bigamist and serial killer, who capitalised on the tourist attraction to lure anywhere between 27 and 200 victims to his elaborately designed “Murder Castle”.
DiCaprio is currently receiving some of the best reviews of his career for his new film, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another. The film, released on 26 September, is hugely acclaimed and is being tipped for awards glory.
What Happens at Night is the seventh Scorsese feature film DiCaprio will star in following Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island, The Wolf of Wall Street and Killers of the Flower Moon.
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