@Courtesy of Life Itself
As if making a film about Jesus Christ weren’t enough, Martin Scorsese is reviving plans to make his long-delayed biopic about Frank Sinatra, with Leonardo DiCaprio reportedly being considered to play the iconic crooner. The 81-year-old auteur is currently working on a film about Jesus that is based on a book by Japanese writer Shūsaku Endō.
According to Variety, Scorsese will plunge into the Sinatra project once the Jesus film is completed. The trade paper also hinted that Jennifer Lawrence will be cast in the role of actress Ava Gardner, who was Sinatra’s wife for six years in the 1950s.
This is not the first time Scorsese has tried to make a movie about the legendary singer. In 2009, he had hoped to cast DiCaprio as Sinatra in a biopic for Universal, but nothing came of it. The following year, Scorcese said that he planned to cast Al Pacino as Sinatra and Robert De Niro as Dean Martin, who was part of the close-knit crew known as the Rat Pack.
Scorsese acknowledged then that he might want to have several different actors to play Sinatra at various stages of his life: “We can’t go through the greatest hits of Sinatra’s life. We tried this already. Just can’t do it. So the other way to go is to have three or four different Sinatras. Younger. Older. Middle-aged. Very old. You cut back and forth in time – and you do it through the music.”
It was believed, however, that Sinatra’s daughter Tina was not pleased with Scorsese’s concept that would detail Sinatra’s connections with organized-crime figures. At the time, an anonymous source was quoted as saying: “Marty wants it to be hard-hitting and showcase the violent, sexually charged, hard-drinking Frank, but Tina wants to show the softer side of her dad and let the focus be on the music.”.
These creative differences involving Sinatra’s estate finally forced Scorsese to abandon the project. He told a reporter in 2017 that “Certain things are very difficult for a family, and I totally understand. But, if they expect me to be doing it, they can’t hold back certain things. The problem is that the man was so complex. Everybody is so complex – but Sinatra in particular.”
It’s not yet known whether Tina Sinatra will give her imprimatur to Scorsese’s latest incarnation of the biopic project.
Scorsese, whose 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ, was highly controversial for its depiction of the human side of Jesus, is still contemplating what approach he might take in his upcoming movie.
“What kind of film I’m not quite sure, but I want to make something unique and different that could be thought-provoking and I hope also entertaining,” he was recently quoted as saying. “I’m not quite sure yet how to go about it. … The possibilities of making a film, the concept of Jesus, the idea of Jesus really stems from my background growing up in the Lower East Side, my interest in Catholicism, in the priesthood, which really led I think, ultimately to the film.”
Andrew Garfield and Miles Teller are reportedly being considered for leading parts in the Jesus film, though it’s not clear what role or roles they might be playing.
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