Martin Scorsese‘s Avengers-esque mob picture The Irishman has been talked about for a long time, and almost always as no more than a possibility, even a dream project: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, and, perhaps, Harvey Keitel and Bobby Cannavale leading the story of Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, a mob hitman whose illustrious career is today best-known for his supposed involvement in the death of Jimmy Hoffa. You can understand our desire to see something big break. It doesn’t help that the last major update was in early 2013, when word came that a table read of Steven Zaillian‘s screenplay had been held — yet most of the involved parties have been busy since then, and so we’ve continued to wait.
That may be coming to an end. According to Deadline, Paramount hope to begin selling international rights to the $100 million production at Cannes later this month — which does not mean it’s coming up right away (let’s not forget that the fall-bound Silence cast its leads three years ago), but as there are currently no reports of Scorsese preparing to shoot another project, this is about as good as it gets.
In the meantime, have a look at De Niro discuss the movie on Jimmy Fallon, including a curious detail about its production (this starts at 3:35), as well as a video essay on Taxi Driver:
The Eyes of TAXI DRIVER from Fandor Keyframe on Vimeo.