Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese team up again, this time to tackle an adaptation of David Grann’s upcoming nonfiction book, The Bet: A Story of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.
Apple Original Films has acquired the rights to the book, which is set to be released in April 2023. The project regroups the key players and companies behind the recently released adaptation of Grann’s true crime novel, Killers of the Flower Moon.
Scorsese is attached to directing and DiCaprio to star in Wager. Producing are Dan Friedkin and Bradley Thomas of Imperative Entertainment, Scorsese through Sikelia Productions and DiCaprio and partner Jennifer Davisson through their Appian Way Productions
Richard Plepler will executive produce through his banner, Eden Productions.
Set in the 1740s, bet the story is set in motion when a pieced together boat carrying 30 emaciated men landed on the coast of Brazil. The men were the surviving crew members of a British ship that chased a Spanish ship and crashed on an island in the South American region of Patagonia. Their stories of surviving the seas and elements made them heroes.
Six months later, however, another ship, even more beaten up than the first, landed on the pelt of Chile, this with three men. These new sailors claimed that the other men were actually mutineers.
As accusations and counter-accusations flew, the British Admiralty launched a special process to uncover the truth of exactly what happened on the island, revealing a story of not just a captain and crew struggling to survive as they fought against the most extreme elements on the planet, but also fighting against their own human nature.
DiCaprio stars with Robert De Niro in Flower Moon, which Scorsese directed for Apple. DiCaprio, Scorsese and Imperative produced the historical crime drama set in 1920s Oklahoma that depicts the serial murder of members of the oil-rich Osage Nation. The film is in mail, although no release date has been set yet.
DiCaprio and Scorsese are one of the great combinations in cinema, and over the past 25 years, the two have collaborated on six films that have yielded multiple Oscar wins and box office hits. The list includes: Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island and The Wolf of Wall Street, of Flower Moon next to release.
On top of Flower MoonGrann’s previously adapted works include those from 2016 The Lost City Zproduced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment and the 2018 Robert Redford drama, The Old Man and 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.
Meanwhile, Imperative currently has its critically acclaimed limited series black birdstarring Taron Egerton, shown weekly on Apple TV+.