Well just about anything regarding what Martin Scorsese is doing is good news, so this update from Al Pacino is certainly welcome. For those unfamiliar, The Irishman is an adaptation of the true crime book I Heard You Paint Houses about the man who claims he killed Jimmy Hoffa that would star Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci. This project has been kicking around for a few years now, with updates such as today’s every now and then assuring that the movie is still happening at some point. In a recent interview with The Daily Beast, Pacino stated that the film is still happening, and stoked the reassurance by confirming Bobby Cannavale (Boardwalk Empire) as part of the cast.
There’s no debating that nobody does gangster films like Scorsese does, with Goodfellas the greatest gangster film of all time in this writer’s opinion. So take him, the genre, a reunion with De Niro and Pesci, mix in a Steve Zaillian script and sprinkle the addition of Pacino (the first collaboration between him and Scorsese) and Cannavale and you’ve got a film that I am salivating for. But even with a script and everyone involved game to make the film, there’s still the matter of when. It initially seemed that this film would shoot sometime in the second half of next year after Scorsese wraps his current film Silence, but that idea was all but done away with when Scorsese attached himself to a Ramones biopic due out in 2016. So for now we cross our fingers that The Irishman will go before cameras after Scorsese’s Ramones biopic if not somehow sooner.
Source: The Dissolve