Brad Pitt can immerse into different roles with ease and he will always find a way to marvel at it. With a decades-long career in Hollywood, the actor has worked with several directors in several movies but not with legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese.
Pitt almost had the opportunity to work with the director but he felt that he would not be fitting to the character in a crime thriller. However, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood star was involved in the film behind the camera.
Brad Pitt Rejected A Martin Scorsese Movie of His Own Production
Martin Scorsese’s 2006 crime thriller, The Departed has to be one of the greatest remakes of all time. The movie was crowned with several accolades with four Oscars. Initially, Brad Pitt purchased the rights to remake the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs through his production company, Plan B. Kingdom of Heaven writer William Monahan was roped in to scribe the project. Martin Scorsese helmed the project right before the movie moved to production.
While Pitt was initially expected to star in the film, the actor felt that he was not fit for any roles in the movie. So, in an attempt to bring in fresher faces to match the character who had just graduated from the academy, he opted himself out of the picture.
“Once [the director Martin] Scorsese became involved, I thought it would be better if they were younger guys that were just starting their lives, guys coming out of the academy, guys who were hungry. I thought I was too old for it,” Pitt told Interview.
Eventually, Matt Damon played Staff Sergeant Colin Sullivan, the role Pitt was in hype for to play opposite Leonardo DiCaprio’s Billy. The Departed landed Scorsese’s first Oscar. However, despite Pitt’s credit in the movie, the Academy did not present him with an Oscar after the movie won the Best Picture award.
The Departed 2: What Happened To Mark Wahlberg’s Pitch?
Another, The Departed star Mark Wahlberg who played Staff Sergeant Sean Dignam in the film, wanted to make a sequel of the classic. The actor met with screenwriter Bill Monahan to have a meeting with Warner Brothers to pitch the idea for a sequel of the 2006 movie. “I went into a meeting with Bill Monahan at Warner Brothers to pitch the sequel to The Departed,” Wahlberg told KFC Radio.
“And let’s just say the pitch didn’t go very well. He really didn’t have anything fleshed out, but he’s the kind of guy you just trust to go and write something. And so when we were working on the script for Cocaine Cowboys, American Desperado, [I] said, ‘Bill, just go write. They like to have things well thought out and planned.'”
Wahlberg’s plan was ambitious, perhaps he was hoping to be the producer of the movie as well. The actor further said that he had Pitt and Robert De Niro in mind while contemplating the idea of a sequel to the Scorsese-directed movie.
