‘I don’t want to do it’: De Niro turned down Scorsese’s 2 films with DiCaprio before Killers of the Moon

Hitting theaters on October 18, Killers of the Flower Moon marks the tenth collaboration between Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese and the sixth between the filmmaker and DiCaprio. The two favorite actors of the New York director meet for the first time in front of the camera. They had already appeared alongside each other in Secret Wounds in 1994, but had never worked together for Scorsese.

Before the Flower Moon Killers, De Niro and DiCaprio could already cross paths in “March”, but fate had a different plan! In the early 2000s, there was talk that Robert De Niro would play Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York. However, as Martin Scorsese confided at Deadline’s microphoneTravis’s interpreter refused in Taxi Driver and Daniel Day-Lewis played the character brilliantly.

The Scorsese gang

“Literally, he said, ‘What are you working on now?’ – I’m going to do New York gangs, are you interested? He said no, I said ok. We’ve always talked about it because he’s the only one who knows where I’m from and who I am, even when we were 15 or 16. He knows this part of New York.”Scorsese explains.

“It was a matter of instinct, courage and humility between us. He said: If the series looks better with me shooting from behind and we only see someone else’s face, then do it.”, confides the director. Gangs of New York A few years later, De Niro and DiCaprio would find themselves in another major Scorsese feature: The Departed (2006).

I don’t want to do that

“I talked to Bob about the project, but he didn’t want to be part of it. I said, ‘Would you like to be in The Departed?’ He said, ‘No, I don’t want to do it.’– pointed out the director. The latter offered him the role of Frank Costello, the godfather of the underworld, eventually played by Jack Nicholson.

Robert De Niro will team up with Scorsese in The Irishman in 2019; It follows Killers of the Flower Moon, in theaters from October 18. The story takes us to the beginning of the 20th century, in the USA. Oil brought wealth to the Osages, who overnight became one of the richest in the world.

The wealth of these Native Americans immediately attracts the lust of unscrupulous white men, who intrigue, extort, and steal as much of the Osage money as they can before turning to murder…