Every big director has their favorites, who irrespective of the size and importance of the role find their name on the cast-member lists of the filmmaker’s movies.
Christopher Nolan regularly works with Cillian Murphy and even gave him the lead role in his latest blockbuster, Oppenheimer. Meanwhile, Samuel L. Jackson is a regular in Quentin Tarantino’s filmography. Similarly, Martin Scorsese, across different decades, has roped in Robert De Niro for his films. Killers of the Flower Moon is the pair’s 10th collaboration for a feature film.
However, at one point, Scorsese and De Niro didn’t work together for more than two decades for different reasons, and that drought ended with an interesting turn of events.
Why Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro Were Struggling to Make Their Passion Project a Reality
Robert De Niro starred in Martin Scorsese-directed Casino in 1995. His portrayal of Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein received positive critical reactions and the movie turned out to be a box office success, grossing $116.1 million globally. The success of the pair’s eighth collaboration made many think they’d again find themselves on the same set sooner than later. But things panned out very differently.
For a long time, they never met on certain subject matter and kept doing their own work separately. In 2009, the actor became extremely passionate about I Heard You Paint Houses and after reading the book, Scorsese decided to reunite for a new project.
However, they struggled to get the financing and when the time came, the possibility of De Niro and Al Pacino playing younger versions of their characters was out of the question. During Directors Roundtable for The Hollywood Reporter, the acclaimed filmmaker recalled how things changed:
“That’s when Pablo Helman mentioned the De-aging, I think unification which is something we heard about but was almost like science fiction. We did a test of De Niro doing scene in Goodfellas and we did it again and we played it back two months later and we said, ‘Let’s take the risk. Let’s try for it.'”
Their passion project was eventually titled The Irishman, a story about truck driver Frank Sheeran (De Niro), who gets involved with Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) and his Pennsylvania crime family. With the movie set in the 1950s, many actors were all made to look much younger with the help of CGI.
How Netflix Helped Martin Scorsese to Make the Irishman
However, the use of technology came with a price tag, which further increased the budget and made things difficult in terms of getting financing from traditional studios.
But Netflix stepped in to push the project to the finish line by splashing $159m (as per The Guardian). Scorsese recalled (via The Hollywood Reporter):
“I got a call from [manager-producer] Rick Yorn, who said, ‘Are you interested in Netflix?’ And the main thing for me was creative freedom. The tradeoff is that it’s a streamer. I said, ‘But it will be shown in theaters, right?'”
The Irishman got a limited theatrical release and was made available for streaming by Netflix. The crime drama impressively earned 10 nominations, including best picture and best director.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter, The Guardian
