Update: We’ve learned that Netflix does not have “a confirmed date or window yet for theatrical and/or streaming” for The Irishman. We’ll update with more information when it’s been officially announced.
Although we’ve yet to see an official still or any footage following the brief Oscars teaser, Martin Scorsese’s highly anticipated crime epic The Irishman will indeed arrive in theaters and on Netflix this fall, and now we have a more specific date. Speaking on Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal podcast, the film’s producer Irwin Winkler confirmed that a Thanksgiving release was set. While he doesn’t get into specifics if that will be the initial theatrical debut before heading to Netflix a few weeks later (like Roma last year), it sounds like the ideal date to give Scorsese more time to work on the extensive visual-effects process.
The director recently discussed this de-aging process with Joanna Hogg, saying, “I love 35mm. Even this new one I’m doing, The Irishman, or the actual title should be I Heard You Paint Houses, we shot as much 35 as possible. However, there’s a great deal of CGI because we’re doing this youthification of De Niro, Pesci, and Al Pacino. They had to be CGI. They had to be a camera with three lenses. I was just crazy.”
He added, “Why I’m concerned, we’re all concerned is that we’re so used to watching them as the older faces. When we put them all together, it cuts back and forth. The thing I talked about before in New York to you. Now, it’s real. Now, I’m seeing it. Now, certain shots need more work on the eyes, need more work on why these exactly the same eyes from the plate shot, but the wrinkles and things have changed. Does it change the eyes at all? If that’s the case, what was in the eyes that I liked? Was it intensity? Was it gravitas? Was it threat?”
Based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses, the crime drama brings together Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, Anna Paquin, and Bobby Cannavale in the story of Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, a mob hitman whose illustrious career is today best-known for supposed involvement in the death of Jimmy Hoffa.
As we await The Irishman, read our review of Scorsese’s first Netflix collaboration of the year, Rolling Thunder Revue.