Martin Scorsese still plans to make a new film about Jesus, with filming likely to push back until his next crime epic is finished.
Next up for Martin Scorsese appears to be a return to the gangster genre, this time with a Hawaiin-set crime epic that will see him collaborate with Dwayne Johnson. That project is set to shoot next year and will see the legendary filmmaker reunite once again with Leonardo DiCaprio, with Emily Blunt also set to star.
After that for Scorsese is his Jesus project, a film that he was reportedly close to shooting last year before electing instead to push it back.
Martin Scorsese was, this week, being feted with a lifetime achievement award by the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily, and while there the filmmaker talked a little about his planned project, saying: “I’m still working on it, because I’d like to give a more contemporary approach to the project.”
He added that “it will almost certainly be a black and white film. It takes time because I like that a work of this type is something that requires many years of study and research.”
According to World Of Reel, the project is said to take place in a contemporary setting, will be independently financed and will be based on Shūsaku Endō’s 1973 book, A Life Of Jesus.
For a Scorsese project, the budget for this one will be relatively low by the sound of it. Another way in which the project will buck the Scorsese tradition is the film’s running time: he has said that it would be around 80 minutes and centre on “Jesus’ core teachings in a way that explores the principles but doesn’t proselytise,” before cryptically adding, “it’s kind of a film, but it wouldn’t be a straight narrative, it wouldn’t be a documentary, it’d be a combination of things.”
“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,” he noted.
Still some way to go there, but might be a while until we get more updates. More as we hear it…
