Due to the keen eye of the editors at Cinema Blend, the blogosphere has been buzzing about The Falcon’s Tale, the newest addition to Martin Scorsese’s giant list of upcoming projects. The movie, which Scorsese would direct and was originally a story which appeared in this August’s Playboy, is a tale about a criminal offered his freedom in exchange for doing undercover investigations at a high-security mental institution.
We did a round-up of all the movies Scorsese is planning to direct in the somewhat-near future, and found at least eight possible films whose production status is at least one step beyond existing in Marty’s mind. To put this in some perspective, IMDB currently lists Steven Spielberg’s “in development” number at seven, Clint Eastwood’s at two, and PT Anderson’s at one.
Is “attaching” to projects just a great new way to stay relevant within the quick turnaround of the film-nerd blogosphere news cycle? Or is it just that Scorsese got really excited after he finally clinched that best director Oscar? After the jump, we look into all these projects whether or not we’ll see them in theaters anytime soon (spoiler: probably not).
– “Boardwal Empire,” a show about the rise of Atlantic city that Scorsese is producing with Mark Whalberg for HBO, is currently in talks to add Steve Buscemi and Kelly McDonald (No Country For Old Men) to its cast. The Sopranos’ Terence Winter is slated to write the script from the book “Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times and Corruption of Atlantic City,” and Scorsese is rumored to be directing the pilot.
– Last month, it was announced that Scorsese and Robert Deniro would be revisiting their director-star dynamic in an adaptation of I Heart You Paint Houses. Deniro would play Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, a mob assassin said to have been involved in the death of Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa and 25 other mob murders. Of course, no other details are certain yet.
– Scorsese darling Leonardo DiCaprio is said to have signed on for a film version of The Wolf of Wall Street, an autobiographical tell-all Scorsese wants to direct about a Wall Street crook who served 22 months in prison in relation to a securities fraud case. Winter is also adapting this book for the screen, but production status is unknown.
– DiCaprio has also been connected to a very up-in-the-air Scorsese film in the starring role, playing Theodore Roosevelt–which we think is kind of a stretch. But this collaboration has been in the works for years, and doesn’t seem to have many concrete plans for production.
– Three years ago, Scorsese said he’d been trying to direct an adaptation of the Japanese novel “Silence” for ten years. The movie about Portugese missionaries in the 17th century and their work with outlawed Christians in Japan is listed on IMDB, but we can’t find any details about the production that aren’t at least a year old. This film is, however, mentioned in most of the articles that look at his official upcoming movies, along with The Long Play (below).
– Scorsese is, finally, also supposedly making rock-and-roll epic The Long Play with business partner Mick Jagger. Written by The Departed‘s screenwriter William Monahan, this film would follow two friends through four decades, with the evolution of the music business as the backdrop.
Scorsese is currently (officially!) working on an untitled George Harrison documentary, on which he’s collaborating with Harrison’s widow and family and which will supposedly take years to produce. We will probably see Shutter Island come out first, though, since it is now in post-production. Shutter Island stars Leonardo DiCaprio, back to play the scary-but-adorable action figure as a U.S. Marshall on the search for an escaped convict from a mental institution. If you ask us, that first mental-institution one sounds much more interesting–Marty, please make that one soon and maybe not also with Leo? Awesome. We look forward to it (them?).