Martin Scorsese‘s “The Irishman” isn’t slotted as a 2018 movie – the official byline says 2019 – but it’s already skyrocketed to the top of most cinephiles “most anticipated” films lists for this year. Film nerds like us want it that bad and hope that Netflix will push for a December 2018 Awards season bow. But the movie is a deceptively complex one which may arrive later than we think.
Another gangster movie, “The Irishman” is a reunion for Scorsese and Robert De Niro, one of the great actor/director partnerships in cinematic history, and they haven’t made a film together since 1995’s “Casino.” If that isn’t enough to whet your appetites, Harvey Keitel, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci are part of the cast as well. But it’s a film that took forever to come to fruition, mainly because of its exorbitant, +$100 million price tag. No one would foot that bill until Netflix, flush with cash and looking for a prestige picture to boast, would. Why such a high cost for a gangster movie? Scorsese and a tech team have “de-aged” some of the actors for a significant portion of the film.
“The Irishman” wouldn’t be the first digital de-aging that has occurred in cinema. David Fincher’s,”The Curious Case of Benjamin Button“, employed the technology eight years ago and De Niro himself was de-aged very briefly, but noticeably in David O. Russell‘s “Joy” (2015). And of course, most recently, “Blade Runner: 2049” has a crucial revolutionary-looking de-aging shot that is just stunning in its realness. VFX, like all technologies, keep improving by the hour, however, the cost for such an affair is no doubt still incredibly steep.
To that end, according to Deadline—in a piece about STX distributing the film in China (Netflix, which owns the rights to the movie, will host it everywhere else around the globe)—says the already sizable budget is ballooning. The streaming channel had initially given Scorsese a budget of $125 million to make “The Irishman,” a significant portion of which apparently went to the de-aging process, not to mention Scorsese nabbing a $10-$15M payday. However, according to the trade, the budget now seems to be “more in the $140M range (and climbing).” Despite the film being all but wrapped up, and editor Thelma Schoonmaker and Scorsese starting on the post-production, the de-aging effects will still need to be completed and who knows how much time that will take to perfect.
Based on the book “I Heard You Paint Houses” by Charles Brandt, Steve Zaillian (“Gangs Of New York,” “Schindler’s List,” “Moneyball,“ “The Night Of“), wrote the screenplay. “The Irishman” tells the story of Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran — a hitman tied to the Bufalino crime family, who was a high ranking officer in the international brotherhood of Teamsters. Sheeran was linked to a possible plot in the JFK assassination and also claimed, on his deathbed, to have murdered Teamster leader and notorious mobster Jimmy Hoffa.