As always, Martin Scorsese‘s dance-card is nice and full. This is good news for movie freaks, since he’s one of the few living masters and 2010’s Shutter Island was a terrific movie (and like so many which open early in the year, completely ignored by Oscar).
Deadline reports that über-producer Scott Rudin – Oscar-nominated this past year for both The Social Network and True Grit – has joined the director’s biopic of legendary crooner, movie star, producer and all-around megalomaniac Frank Sinatra.
The question for this one is not who will play Sinatra (Ol Blue Eyes was last played by Ray Liotta in the HBO original film The Rat Pack) but when exactly Scorsese will get to this one. He’s most likely following the 3D adventure film Hugo Cabret with Silence, an adaptation of Shasaku Endo‘s novel about 17th-century Jesuit priests encountering violence and persecution upon arriving in Japan to find their mutual mentor and spread the Good Word.
After that, it’s either The Wolf of Wall Street with Leonardo DiCaprio or The Irishman with the dream team of Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel. However, with the tireless mega-producer Rudin now jumping onto the Sinatra film, expect things to heat up quickly.
Mandalay Entertainment’s Peter Guber and Cathy Shulman brought the project to Universal two years ago, having purchased the rights to the singer’s life story and music from Frank Sinatra Enterprises, which is co-owned by the crooner’s estate and Warner Music Group.
Given that Scorsese once had a Dean Martin bio set-up with Tom Hanks in lead, (the sadly long-since-stalled Dino), the director might just pull this one out of his hat sooner than expected. He’s an Old Hollywood nut, one the world’s greatest cinephiles, and while his Golden Age of Hollywood jones might’ve been partially satiated by The Aviator, Frank Sinatra’s life is one of the strangest and grandest sagas That Town has ever seen. Whenever Scorsese gets to it, should be a good one.
Which movie would you like to see Scorsese take on next? Are you looking forward to Hugo Cabret?