Martin Scorsese Wants to Adapt the Novel ‘Home’

There’s a Time profile on Martin Scorsese where the filmmaker mentions “lots of movie projects” in the works, including an adaptation of Marilynne Robinson’s “Home” — here’s the book’s synopsis:

The Reverend Boughton’s hell-raising son, Jack, has come home after twenty years away. Artful and devious in his youth, now an alcoholic carrying two decades worth of secrets, he is perpetually at odds with his traditionalist father, though he remains his most beloved child. As Jack tries to make peace with his father, he begins to forge an intense bond with his sister Glory, herself returning home with a broken heart and turbulent past.

This is the first we’ve heard about “Home.” It does sound like an intimate film, not as epic as the films Scorsese has been making these last 20 years, most of which were these big Hollywood epics.

Scorsese does also talk about his Jesus movie–a project that the legendary filmmaker conjured up after “responding to the Pope’s appeal […] by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus.”

Scorsese isn’t exactly sure if this film will be an actual movie, and it does sound like it might be a hybrid of fiction and non-fiction storytelling, with Scorsese appearing in the film:

I don’t know what it’s going to be, exactly. I don’t know what you’d call it. It wouldn’t be a straight narrative. But there would be staged scenes. And I’d be in it.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” is being released on October 20th and ‘Killers’ author David Grann has mentioned that his book, “The Wager,” would potentially be the next film Scorsese shoots.

Not counting “Home,” “The Wager” and Jesus, Scorsese currently has two other films in development; a Jerry Garcia biopic, and a Teddy Roosevelt biopic starring Leonardo DiCaprio. That’s a total of five projects the 80-year-old filmmaker is working on.

Scorsese has mentioned that he has no plans in retiring. He wants to continue directing movies until he just physically can’t make them anymore. Here’s what he said back in May:

“I’m old. I read stuff. I see things. I want to tell stories, and there’s no more time. Kurosawa, when he got his Oscar, when George [Lucas] and Steven [Spielberg] gave it to him, he said, “I’m only now beginning to see the possibility of what cinema could be, and it’s too late.” He was 83. At the time, I said, “What does he mean?” Now I know what he means.”