After Jesus, Martin Scorsese will make a film about Frank Sinatra. At 81, the Italian-American director, fresh from ten Oscar nominations for Killers of the Flower Moon, continues to churn out projects.
Regardless of his age, the legendary master of memorable films such as Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, The Last Temptation of Christ and The Age of Innocence, is planning his next activities and these include, in addition to the short film on Jesus (80 minutes, not the more than three hours of his latest creations, adapted from a book by the Japanese author Shusaku Endo) which he also spoke about in January with Pope Francis in the Vatican, a biopic of the singer of My Way . According to Variety, an exceptional cast would be involved: there should be Leonardo DiCaprio (a frequent collaborator of the director) in the part of Frank, while Jennifer Lawrence would be entrusted with the role of Ol' Blue Eyes' second wife, the actress Ava Gardner.
The Sinatra project, on the back burner since 2009 when the director thought of using four actors to play the same age of the singer, is not however without obstacles: Tina Sinatra, Frank's 75-year-old daughter who also controls his inheritance and rights, has not yet given the long-awaited blessing and as recently as 2017 Martin began to think that the film would never be made. Tina, who previously objected to a script that made no secret of Sinatra's ties to the Cosa Nostra, is the daughter of the singer's first wife, Nancy Barbato, and it was Gardner who caused her parents' marriage to fail.
In the meantime, however, with two of the most important stars on the planet having given their availability, important studios have begun to show interest: Apple, which financed Killers of the Flower Moon with 215 million dollars, would be interested in continuing the collaboration with Scorsese, but it would be Sony, according to Variety, which is emerging as the frontrunner to bring the project to fruition.
Going against the trend of 61-year-old Quentin Tarantino according to whom directors "have an expiry date", Scorsese is not the only octogenarian to continue to put together first-rate films: in the next Cannes program there are in fact old glories such as 85-year-old Francis Ford Coppola with the controversial and self-financed Megalopolis, in competition against 81-year-old Canadian David Cronenberg of The Shrouds, while at the last Oscars the award for best animated film went to The Boy and the Heron by 83-year-old Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki, whose Studio Ghibli will receive the 2024 honorary Palme d'Or.