Martin Scorsese is staying plenty busy, according to a new report from Variety. We already knew his next film was going to be another Shūsaku Endō adaptation about the life of Jesus Christ (a spiritual follow-up to his 2016 film Silence). But Variety’s sources say the 81-year-old is already lining up the film after that, which, if it moves forward, sounds like it’ll be a major crowd-pleaser. Allegedly, that film will star Scorsese’s frequent muse, Leonardo DiCaprio, as Frank Sinatra, with Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence as the singer’s second wife, Ava Gardner.
There aren’t many other details for the Scorsese Sinatra film, which makes sense given that he has a whole other movie to make first. It hasn’t even technically been greenlit yet, because Tina Sinatra, who controls her father’s estate, hasn’t signed off on the project. (Tina is the daughter of Nancy Barbato, whose marriage to Sinatra was broken up by his affair with Gardner.) Still, it’s about the Most Scorsese a film could be—an Italian-American icon whose life is a portrait of grandeur and excess, and who also has ties to criminal enterprise. Despite the fact that the project is basically just a bunch of unconfirmed ideas, studios are reportedly already vying for the rights, including Sony and Apple (which produced Killers Of The Flower Moon).
But first: Jesus. Scorsese reportedly wants to reunite with Silence star Andrew Garfield, though there’s no word if he’d play Jesus or one of the disciples. Miles Teller is also in the running for a role. This one’s supposedly filming later this year in Egypt, Italy, and Israel (which may or may not pan out, given that the country is currently engaged in violent conflict). Scorsese may be able to better juggle these two major projects given that the Jesus movie is not another three-plus-hour epic, but rather a trim 80-minute feature. Scorsese told the Los Angeles Times earlier this year that the screenplay for that film is finished, and it’ll be set “mostly in the present day” though he doesn’t “want to be locked into a certain period, because he wants the film to feel timeless.” As we understand it, if he can get this one favor for the Pope out of the way, then he’ll be able to give the Sinatra story his full focus.