Martin Scorsese Isn't Shooting A New Film This Year

It’s been almost four years since Martin Scorsese was on a movie set — principal photography wrapped on “Killers of the Flower Moon” in October 2021. We’re all wondering what’s next for the legendary filmmaker. He’s not getting any younger, and even he admits that. Time is flying by.

As far as we know, Scorsese is attached to numerous projects. There’s “Home,” “Devil in the White City,” “The Life of Jesus,” “Sinatra,” “Midnight Vendetta,” his Untitled Hawaii Crime Movie with Dwayne Johnson and, far less likely, “The Wager.”

I’ve been getting a lot of emails this year about this, so I started sniffing around, asking people in the know, and can now confidently confirm that, according to my sources, Scorsese has no plans to shoot a film this year.

What I’m hearing is that Scorsese’s waiting it out, and plans have been set in motion for him to shoot the Hawaii-set crime saga, starring Dwayne Johnson and Leonardo DiCaprio early next year. 20th Century is producing the $200M film.

Johnson is co-writing the screenplay with Vanity Fair journalist Nick Bilton. The story centers on the Hawaiian crime syndicate that operated during the 1960s and 1970s, which the film will adapt. The organization, known as The Company, was led by Wilford “Nappy” Pulawa—the first and only known Hawaiian mob boss in history.

Scorsese, now 82, recently earned an Emmy nomination for his cameo in Seth Rogen’s “The Studio.” He had planned to shoot two major projects last year — “Sinatra” and “The Life of Jesus” — but both were abruptly scrapped. The reasons remain unclear, though one credible theory suggests Scorsese was unhappy with the ‘Jesus’ script, while “Sinatra” may have run into legal threats from the singer’s estate.

In a late 2023 interview, Scorsese tackled the passage of time, his getting older, and how he only has a certain amount of films left in him:

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.

Time to get to work, maestro.