Martin Scorsese, often hailed as one of cinema’s most enduring storytellers, is set to adapt What Happens at Night, Peter Cameron’s chilling and dreamlike novel. The film will bring the director back together with Leonardo DiCaprio and, for the first time, place Jennifer Lawrence under his direction. News of the project was first reported by Variety.
According to the outlet, Apple Original Films is in talks to finance and co-produce the movie alongside Studiocanal. The European studio acquired the rights to Cameron’s book in 2023 and quickly brought Scorsese on board as a producer. Playwright and screenwriter Patrick Marber has been tapped to adapt the novel for the screen.
At its core, the story follows an American couple who travel to a remote, snowbound European city in hopes of adopting a child. Their plans are soon overshadowed by hardship and illness. “It’s a difficult journey that leaves the wife, who is struggling with cancer, desperately weak, and her husband worries that her illness will prevent the orphanage from releasing their child,” the book’s synopsis explains.
On arrival, the couple checks into the eerie Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel, a sprawling building where the bar never closes and the lobby is filled with strange and colorful figures. As Variety describes it, these include “an ancient, flamboyant chanteuse to a debauched businessman to an enigmatic faith healer. Nothing is as it seems in this baffling, frozen world, and the more the couple struggles to claim their baby, the less they seem to know about their marriage, themselves, and life itself.”
Scorsese’s decision to take on Cameron’s story adds another dimension to a career that has never been limited to a single genre. While he is most closely associated with crime dramas such as Goodfellas and The Irishman, he has also turned to quieter meditations like Silence and expansive historical works such as Killers of the Flower Moon.
His long-running collaboration with DiCaprio has been central to his modern output: together they have made six features, from The Aviator to The Wolf of Wall Street. Their partnership also produced The Departed, which finally won Scorsese the Academy Award for Best Director. What Happens at Night will be their seventh outing together.
For Jennifer Lawrence, the film marks her first collaboration with Scorsese as a director, though he recently produced her upcoming drama Die My Love. Directed by Lynne Ramsay, the film has received strong reviews at its Cannes 2025 premiere, with Lawrence’s performance quickly generating awards buzz that has since then not died down. The drama is expected to hit theaters later this year.
DiCaprio, meanwhile, is already earning praise for his latest performance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another. As per reports, the film has been selected to open the Galas section of the 9th Pingyao International Film Festival (PIFF), running from September 24 to 30, 2025.
Anderson’s story, loosely based on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, follows a group of former revolutionaries who reunite after 16 years to confront an old enemy. DiCaprio plays Bob Ferguson, with Regina Hall appearing alongside him as Deandra. Critics have highlighted DiCaprio’s performance as one of his most compelling in recent years.
The upcoming Scorsese project also reunites DiCaprio and Lawrence on screen. They last worked together in Adam McKay’s 2021 satire Don’t Look Up, a sharp critique of media and politics that became a streaming sensation and picked up multiple Academy Award nominations. Their return as co-stars, this time under Scorsese’s direction, is expected to be one of the year’s most talked-about pairings.
With the combined forces of Scorsese, DiCaprio and Lawrence, supported by Apple Original Films and Studiocanal, What Happens at Night is shaping up to be more than just another literary adaptation. It promises to deliver an atmospheric and emotionally intense film that blends mystery, unease, and the kind of performances that linger long after the credits roll.