The Irishman

The new Netflix mobster film could become Scorsese’s most expensive film to date.

When Martin Scorsese first took his next project to Netflix, it raised more than a few eyebrows. It seemed odd that Scorsese, an outspoken advocate for the theatrical viewing experience and film preservation, would give his new movie to a streaming service. But according to early reports, part of the deal for The Irishman was an agreement to release the film theatrically — giving Netflix a chance to vie for that coveted Oscar and satisfying Scorsese’s artistic integrity. It’s awfully strange, then, that Netflix has yet to confirm a theatrical release for The Irishman.

Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman is the kind of ambitious picture that regular studios would side-eye: an epic spanning decades and employing de-aging technology to make its stars look younger based on where a scene falls in the film’s timeline. Paramount had its eye on the project before Netflix made Scorsese a better deal, and while a lot of people are side-eyeing Netflix’s model — especially when it comes to their relationship with brick-and-mortar movie theaters (or lack thereof) — Robert De Niro says the funding Netflix offered for the project made it their best option.

As it turns out, rumors of Joe Pesci’s involvement in The Irishman have not been greatly exaggerated. Although Pesci’s name has been attached to reports about Martin Scorsese’s mob drama since its inception several years back, recent updates cast some serious doubt on the actor’s involvement. That changed today, as Pesci — along with Bobby Cannavale and Harvey Keitel — has officially joined the cast of The Irishman, which marks his fourth collaboration with Scorsese and Robert De Niro.

See a few of his movies, and you’ll start to recognize the Martin Scorsese style: quick zooms and jump cuts cribbed from the French New Wave, exhilarating tracking shots, the occasional expertly-deployed pop hit, brief breaks from reality straight out of Powell & Pressburger’s playbook. He’s forged an entire career out of synthesizing influences and making their techniques his own, but even as he’s established himself as one of the most distinctive auteurs currently working, he’s never gotten mired in his own aesthetic. He constantly challenges himself to try more (if you need proof, just look at Silence), and in a new interview, he confirms that he’s going for something different with his next picture.

I now invite you to take a break from staring out the window and wondering what the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie with Daniel Day-Lewis is going to be like, and rotate in your chair to stare out of a different window and wonder what the new Martin Scorsese movie with Robert De Niro is going to be like. It’s been just about a year since we learned that Scorsese’s new mob drama (featuring the all-star team of De Niro, Joe Pesci, Al Pacino, Harvey Keitel, and Bobby Cannavale) was for sure happening, and as if in commemoration of that anniversary, today brings the news that production will soon get up and running.

Sound the alarm emojis — last night brought a new update on the slow gestation of Martin Scorsese’s next feature film project, the mob drama The Irishman. It’s already a hot property, boasting a cast including Marty favorites Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci along with newcomer Al Pacino, who already spent the last two decades acting as if he was in the third act of Goodfellas anyhow. “Martin Scorsese doing another crime epic with some of today‘s greatest living actors” turned out to be quite the tantalizing prospect, too, because last night brought the news that Netflix has purchased the rights to the film right out from under Paramount.

Like most cinephiles, I was vaguely aware that Joe Pesci has been retired from acting for a while now, but I assumed that meant he had made a few low-budget movies in the early 2000s and walked away. Imagine my surprise, then, when I realized that Pesci has made exactly two live-action movies since Lethal Weapon 4 in 1998. One was The Good Shepherd, the Robert De Niro-directed 2006 drama about the early history of the CIA. And if a close friend can lure Joe Pesci out of retirement once, maybe he can do it again.

A helpful mantra to repeat to yourself while reading this article might be “I trust Martin Scorsese. I trust Martin Scorsese. I trust Martin Scorsese.” And whatever you do, try to envision Benjamin Button and not, say, a certain baffling posthumous CGI rendering featured in Rogue One. That said, here’s the news: Martin Scorsese is planning to use advanced CGI technology to de-age Robert De Niro in The Irishman — come to think of it, they’ve been planning this movie for so long that de-aging De Niro seems reasonable.

Martin Scorsese has been talking about making The Irishman for so long that we were starting to think that the crime drama would never happen — much like his Frank Sinatra movie. And while we still have no clue if Silence is hitting theaters later this year, it looks like the iconic director is getting ready to defy our skepticism as The Irishman does indeed appear to be his next film.