Apple has locked up director Martin Scorsese for a multi-year deal, to produce and direct new films for Apple [via Deadline]. This, of course, comes on the heels of Apple buying Scorsese’s upcoming “Killers of the Flower Moon,” in a massive deal that was reportedly worth more than $160 million.
Supposedly, the budget on ‘Killers’ had inflated to a worrisome $225M and started to get Paramount a little too nervous about its commercial prospects by shelling out money for such a risky endeavor. The troubled post-production on the film resulted in Scorsese reaching out to countless studios including Netflix, Universal, and MGM. Ultimately, AppleTV+ won out the rights.
Scorsese’s last movie (“The Irishman”) was a Netflix original with an equally expensive $173 million budget. However, ‘Killers’ is said to cost $50 million more than that figure and forced Paramount’s hand to partner with another distributor on the film. Has Scorsese been so spoiled by the creative and budgetary freedoms given to him by Netflix on “The Irishman” that he’d rather bypass all the back-and-forth artistic clashing involved with a big studio in favor of the total creative carte blanche a streamer gives? That’s what looks to be the case, it seems as though Scorsese has learned to stop worrying about theatrical and love streaming.