Martin Scorsese is set to turn to his long-gestating Frank Sinatra biopic once he’s finished his Jesus Christ film, it seems. More here.
It took him a long time to make, release and promote Killers Of The Flower Moon, but Martin Scorsese is now planning to get back to a movie set. Two movie sets as it happens, with apparent plans to make his next pair of films back-to-back.
The man has more energy at 81 than I have at, er, my age. Proof? Well, we knew that he was planning to make a film about Jesus Christ, the fourth time he’ll have directed an overtly religious-themed feature. The plan with that is for it to be a much slimmer film than his last two features (The Irishman preceded Killers Of The Flower Moon of course).
But now we learn that he’s resurrected a long-time passion project (another one!), his planned biopic of Frank Sinatra. This is a film that he got close to making a couple of times, but seemed to have given up on just under a decade ago. The stumbling block was the Frank Sinatra estate, presumably being protective of the late singer. That said, stories of Frank Sinatra are pretty legendary, and it’s hard to imagine a too sanitised telling of his story.
Leonardo DiCaprio is, perhaps predictably, in the running to play Frank Sinatra, with Jennifer Lawrence also set for a lead role in the project. There’s no studio backing as of yet, but given how well music biopics are doing, it’s understandable that many studios are interested. Sony is said to be the running favourite, and it’s also just committed to four biopics of The Beatles, to be directed by Sam Mendes.
It’s likely that the Jesus film will go first, but that’s not been confirmed either. As we hear more on these projects, we’ll keep you posted…
