Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese will join forces again: this time they will tackle an adaptation of the bestseller “Les Naufragés du Wager” which has just been published in France.
David Grann is in vogue: after Killers of the Flower Moon, another of his bestsellers will be adapted for the cinema by Martin Scorsese and with Leonardo DiCaprio in the cast, thus marking the seventh collaboration of the legendary duo.
Last year, Apple acquired the rights – for several million dollars according to the specialized press – of its new non-fiction book, The Castaways of the Wager, available since April in the United States and just published here. The acclaimed novel remains the third best seller in the essay category, fourteen weeks after its publication. Indeed, according to the New York Times (via Le Monde), the book has already sold tens of thousands of copies, while Barack Obama has included it in his traditional summer reading list.
David Grann is now known to be a specialist in the investigation of the past and is considered one of the masters of “literary journalism”. In 2016, he had already broken all records after selling the rights to Killers of the Flower Moon for $5 million.
Set in the 1740s, The Castaways of the Wager will tell, like the book before it, the story of a British navy ship that is shipwrecked on a desert island in Patagonia following a mission to salvage treasures on a Spanish pavilion. Stranded and forced to survive against the elements, the crew descends into anarchy and finds themselves accused by other sailors of being traitors guilty of mutiny. While the testimonies are opposed, the Royal Navy organizes a trial to find out what really happened on the island.
DAVID GRANN AT THE CINEMA
Killers of the Flower Moon And The Castaways of the Wager are not the first works of David Grann to be adapted to the cinema: he is indeed the author of the novels which inspired The Lost City of Z (2016) by James Gray with Charlie Hunnam, Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson, produced by the production company of Brad Pitt, and Robert Redford’s 2018 drama The Old Man & the Gun. His book The White Darkness, meanwhile, is being developed by Soo Hugh (The Terror) as an Apple original limited series that will star Tom Hiddleston.
DICAPRIO – SCORSESE: THE SUPER DUO
This new collaboration of Leonardo DiCaprio And Martin Scorsese is again eagerly awaited, the duo undoubtedly forming one of the greatest couples in cinema. They have, over the past 25 years, worked together on six films that have generated multiple Oscars. The list includes Gangs of New York, Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island, The Wolf of Wall Street and Killers of the Flower Moon which caused a sensation at the last Cannes Film Festival.
Apple Original Films/Paramount Pictures “Killers of the Flower Moon” (2023)
Also inspired by true events, the period crime drama looks back at the serial murders in Oklahoma in the 1920s, which were victims of members of the Osage community, which had become rich thanks to the oil present under its lands – a series of brutal murders now known as the Reign of Terror.
While waiting to learn more about Les Naufragés du Wager, Killers of the Flower Moon will be available in theaters on October 18, 2023.