Deadline reports that Martin Scorsese is setting up his next movie, and he’s tapped Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence to star. The project is based on Peter Cameron’s What Happens At Night, a spooky tale of an American couple who travel to a small European town to adopt a baby, but all is not as it seems.
Apple Original Films is negotiating to finance and produce What Happens At Night, which has been scripted by Patrick Marber (Notes On A Scandal). If all goes well, production could begin in January 2026. Scorsese signed on board to produce the project over two years ago, but he wasn’t expected to direct then.
With notes of The Shining and Scorsese’s own Shutter Island, the story “is a dream-like story of a married American couple who travel to a small, snowy European town to adopt a baby. They check into a cavernous, largely deserted hotel where they encounter an enigmatic cast of characters including a flamboyant chanteuse, a depraved businessman and a charismatic faith healer. Nothing is quite as it seems in this strange, frozen world. As the couple struggle to claim their baby, the less they seem to know about themselves and the life they’ve built together.“
Scorsese and DiCaprio have been working together for over twenty years, beginning with Gangs of New York and continuing with The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Killers of the Flower Moon.
It was previously believed that Scorsese would be tackling a Hawaiian-set crime drama which had Leonardo DiCaprio, Emily Blunt, and Dwayne Johnson attached, but it would appear that What Happens At Night is up first. The crime drama would focus on a “turbulent time on the island paradise when an aspiring mob boss battled rival crime factions to wrest control of the underworld of the Hawaiian islands…In 1960s and 70s Hawaii, this formidable and charismatic mob boss rises to build the islands’ most powerful criminal empire, waging a brutal war against mainland corporations and rival syndicates while fighting to preserve his ancestral land.“
Scorsese has also considered a Frank Sinatra biopic (which was eyeing DiCaprio and Lawrence to star) and The Life of Jesus, based on Shūsaku Endō’s 1973 novel, but both seem to have been put on the back burner. There has also been talk of Scorsese taking the helm of Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City (with DiCaprio once again starring), but that one has been in development hell for quite some time.
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