©Courtesy of Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger

Martin Scorsese’s upcoming film projects, biopics of Jesus Christ and Frank Sinatra, are on the back burner. The 81-year-old director had planned to start shooting both of these films this year, but both have been indefinitely postponed.

According to published reports in Variety, “Artisans and other key stakeholders who had signed on to the Sinatra project were notified in mid-August that the November start date had been canceled, with no rescheduled date.”

A Life of Jesus was to have been based on a novel by Japanese author Shūsaku Endō, who also wrote a book that inspired Scorsese to make another film: Silence. Though no cast had been announced, Andrew Garfield was reportedly interested in the leading role, as was Miles Teller before him. It would have been the first film Scorsese made about Jesus since his controversial The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988.

 

Leonardo DiCaprio, on the other hand, was Scorsese’s choice to play Sinatra, with Jennifer Lawrence playing his second wife, Ava Gardner. No studio has yet signed on to the Sinatra biopic, though Apple and Sony are reportedly interested in the project. In 2002, Scorsese had planned to make a film about Sinatra with John Travolta in the title role and Tom Hanks playing Dean Martin, but it never came to fruition.

It’s also being speculated that the delay is due to problems in getting approval from the Sinatra estate, which is managed by the late singer’s daughter, Tina. After all, it was Sinatra’s romance with Ava Gardner that contributed to the breakup of his marriage to Nancy Sinatra, who was Tina’s mother.

But there are other factors to be considered, especially in reference to the Jesus project. Scorsese was hoping to shoot significant parts of the film in Israel and Egypt, which may be problematic given the current conflicts in the Gaza region. Budgeting issues may also have played a role in in the postponements. Scorsese, after all, expended a lot of his own resources in shooting Megalopolis, and he’s unlikely to recoup his investments. Does he have any more wineries to sell, or can he tempt Jesus to change some water into wine as an encore of sorts to his 1988 film?

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