What next for Martin Scorsese? All the projects on the director’s plate
In a GQ interview promoting Killers of the Flower Moon back in 2023, Martin Scorsese admitted to indecision over his choice of future projects.
Asked about his own mortality in that interview he said: “I think about that all the time.”
At 82 years old — as hard as it is to admit — the clock is ticking for America’s greatest living filmmaker.
He also expressed some regret at following up Oscar-winner The Departed with the psychological genre film Shutter Island and not using that overdue award cred to finance long-term passion project Silence sooner.
He did get around to Silence, a slow-burn period epic about Portuguese jesuit priests in 17th century feudal Japan, in 2016 and has only made two movies since, both epics that enjoyed major financial backing from streamers: The Irishman (Netflix) then Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple+).
In August at a Q&A he said he didn’t want to make another ‘big movie with lots of extras’. But if he’s got only a few films more in him, he might be tempted to go big once again.
So, what’s next for Marty?
Devil in the White City
Probably the current frontrunner?
An adaptation of Erik Larson’s 2003 historical crime novel has been in the offing since back in 2010, when Scorsese’s long-term muse Leonardo DiCaprio optioned the book, something that set tongues wagging in Hollywood.
At one stage it looked like Devil in the White City would be Scorsese/DiCaprio’s next film after the huge success of The Wolf of Wall Street but, for one reason or another, it fell apart.
Then, briefly, it was going to be a limited TV series with Todd Field directing and Keanu Reaves in the lead role as serial killer H.H. Holmes who turns his home into a defacto murder factory in Chicago under the shadow of the spectacular 1893 World’s Fair.
That collapsed too and, Deadline reports, it’s back on Marty’s radar (albeit without a script, despite all these years in development hell).
Back in August producer Stacy Sher said that the project was still on the cards, albeit with Scorsese and DiCaprio just producing but now Deadline claims it could see Marty back behind the camera for his seventh film with Leo.
And wouldn’t you just know it, screenwriting legend Eric Roth, who wrote Killers of the Flower Moon (with some help from Paul Thomas Anderson if you believe the rumours), just this week confirmed he was writing a new script for Scorsese, could it be Devil? It would seem so.
A Life of Jesus
A second adaptation of a Shusaku Endo book? (Silence was the first). Scorsese has been fairly outspoken about wanting to revisit the story of Jesus, something he first tackled with The Last Temptation of Christ back in 1988. He even told the Pope of his plans when he met with the pontiff in Rome last year.
A Life of Jesus, if you believe reports, would be a much shorter movie than The Last Temptation and Scorsese’s later work (The Irishman and Killers are both 3hr+), with an estimated running time of more like 80 minutes. It also might be more literal and hew closer to the Bible; think more Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew, a film Scorsese regularly celebrates.
Speaking to the LA Times, Scorsese said:
“I’m trying to find a new way to make it more accessible and take away the negative onus of what has been associated with organised religion.
“Right now, ‘religion,’ you say that word and everyone is up in arms because it’s failed in so many ways. But that doesn’t mean necessarily that the initial impulse was wrong. Let’s get back. Let’s just think about it. You may reject it. But it might make a difference in how you live your life — even in rejecting it. Don’t dismiss it offhand. That’s all I’m talking about. And I’m saying that as a person who’s going to be 81 in a couple of days.”
There has been no casting news but industry rumours linked Andrew Garfield, who starred in Silence, to the project, along with Miles Teller.
However in September it was reported that filming had been indefinitely postponed.
Frank Sinatra biopic
Marty has wanted to lens a biopic about Ol’ Blue Eyes for decades but was blocked by the singer and, after his death in 1998, his estate. Sinatra did not want a movie to publicise his infamous links with the Mob (crooning character Johnny Fontaine in The Godfather is widely seen to be a Sinatra stand-in).
The project was first announced at 2009 and has been the subject of fevered speculation since, especially with those wondering if the Sinatra estate would ever give the film its blessing (his daughter Tina Sinatra is in charge).
In April last year Variety reported that DiCaprio (who else?) was in talks to star alongside Jennifer Lawrence and said the film would focus on Sinatra’s tumultuous marriage to actress Ava Gardner.
Phil Alden Robinson (who has a rather sparse/sketchy screenplay record) was reported to be on script duty.
But the movie also hit the skids in autumn, just as it was supposed to be gearing up to shoot.
The Wager
I think this one is dead in the water, if you pardon the pun. There was a brief time there where it looked like The Wager would be Marty’s follow up to Killers — a second adaptation of David Grann nonfiction in a row.
In July 2022 Scorsese and DiCaprio acquired screen rights to the book, nine months before the book even hit the shelves.
But, despite some speculation and chatter, it has largely stalled and Scorsese himself has poured cold water on the project. Much of The Wager (subtitle: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder), takes place on the high seas and any film adaptation would likely involve either a gruelling on-location shoot or a lot of time in a studio tank.
Perhaps that’s not the sort of thing Scorsese is after.
He was asked directly about the project back in October 2023 and said:
“First of all, the issue is now that the writer’s strike is over, and because so much is on me to go out there and spread the word about Killers of the Flower Moon, let me take a break. And we’ll get working with writers and see if we get it on the page. And maybe it’s something I could co-direct, so to speak. It’ll be difficult [to shoot a movie out on the water.] But there are ways now, with certain technical things we could do, to make it bearable. Depending on how we get the script together. I’m not sure [if Leo will play Lieutenant Byron or the crazy Captain]. There’s a lot of good parts. [This is less than 100% until I have the script]. That’s the case. That’s normal.”
We’ve heard next-to-nothing since. Maybe it’s sunk.
Home
Perhaps the strangest announcement but, if you believe Marty’s wish to eschew big movies with lots of extras, maybe the one that makes the most sense?
In September 2023 it was reported that Scorsese would helm an adaptation of Marilynne Robinson’s award-winning 2008 novel Home, which is a period domestic drama centred on the Boughton family in Iowa in the 1950s and the family patriarch Reverend Robert Boughton.
Indiewire described the novel as “rife with philosophical references and Biblical quotations, with the central themes being mortality and theology.”
Official synopsis:
The Reverend Boughton’s hell-raising son, Jack, has come home after twenty years away. Artful and devious in his youth, now an alcoholic carrying two decades worth of secrets, he is perpetually at odds with his traditionalist father, though he remains his most beloved child. As Jack tries to make peace with his father, he begins to forge an intense bond with his sister Glory, herself returning home with a broken heart and turbulent past.
The script will be written by Todd Field and Kent Jones and the project has been acquired by Apple Studios, who were also behind Killers.
Home is part of a series of novels by Robinson called the ‘Gilead’ novels, named after the first book in 2004. It’s thought that Field or Jones would direct one of the other adaptations: Gilead, Jack or Lila.
In November last year Marty said he’d like to adapt Home but there was a “scheduling issue” to resolve. That was just a few months ago… could cameras roll in 2025?
Grateful Dead biopic
Another one that Marty seems to have moved on from. But who knows?
Back in 2021 it was reported that Jonah Hill would play frontman Jerry Garcia in a Grateful Dead biopic that would have again been financed by Apple (they’ve got deep pockets).
Deadline reported that Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski had been tapped to write the script. Hill, who worked with Scorsese on The Wolf of Wall Street, would have also produced the movie.
