What World Leader Got in the Way of Martin Scorsese's Angelina Jolie-Starring 'Cleopatra' Movie?
Is Kim Jong Un dead? That rumor was floating around recently and seemed like a fun one. I'm not sure we ever got confirmation on that.
But right off the bat, I'll tell you that, along with all the atrocities and human rights violations he's committed, he also ruined a Scorsese movie, and I'm really miffed.
Martin Scorsese just pulled back the curtain on one of the most intriguing lost epics in modern cinema: a high-budget ‘Cleopatra’ starring Angelina Jolie, with Leonardo DiCaprio, and possibly Daniel Day-Lewis joining her, that was taken from us because the leader of North Korea has no idea how to laugh.
Basically, before the 2014 Sony hack, Columbia was making this movie, and once the hack hit, it destroyed the careers of all the executives involved, and the film fell by the wayside.
You can see Scorsese and his daughter, Francesca, talk about it in the new Netflix series, Crafty.
Let's dive in.
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The Dream Team That Never Was
So, thanks to the hack, we have leaked emails from the time that show Jolie was so committed to working with Scorsese that she offered to fly out to plead her case directly. The pitch worked, and Scorsese officially came on board.
Okay, so Scorsese was deeply enthusiastic about Sony's Cleopatra adaptation, and it checked a bucket-list item: directing a Roman epic.
And the cast he wanted in the movie was pretty staggering.
- Angelina Jolie as Cleopatra
- Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis as Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, marking a monumental Gangs of New York reunion
Scorsese said:
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