UPDATE: It looks like the rumor was indeed false. Screendaily reports:
Zentropa sources have been busy denying the rumours. “I have seen it [the story] in the Danish film magazine and what is written there is not true,” von Trier’s business partner Peter Aalbaek Jensen told Screen.
In one of the strangest news stories in awhile, Martin Scorsese has reported (via Copenhagen film magazine Ekko) that he’s interested in making a sequel/reboot/remake to his seminal 1976 classic Taxi Driver…with none other than Danish madman Lars von Trier.
The idea of a Taxi Driver sequel isn’t 100% crazy, as about five years or so ago Scorsese suggested that he was interested in doing it, with star Robert De Niro and writer Paul Schrader returning. The source seems to suggest that this would be more of a remake though. This wouldn’t be alien to von Trier though since he has previously challenged another filmmaker in 2003’s The Five Obstructions. In fact, the story crux of Taxi Driver isn’t necessarily some hallowed original untampered idea, seeing as how both The Searchers and Paris, Texas have employed the “troubled man goes on misguided quest to save innocent woman” angle.
An official announcement “will be made soon” according to Ekko.
A Taxi Driver remake with von Trier. Best or worst idea ever?