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Scorsese says the Sony hack over 'The Interview' killed his Angelina Jolie Cleopatra film
Martin Scorsese says his planned Cleopatra film with Angelina Jolie fell apart because of the 2014 Sony hack, which followed the release of Seth Rogen's comedy The Interview. He made the comments to his daughter Francesca Scorsese on the first episode of Tribeca's series Crafty, Deadline and Variety report.
In The Interview, two TV journalists are recruited by the CIA to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Deadline describes the hack as a North Korean state-sponsored attack.
“We were ready on the script. Angelina Jolie—We were going.” — Martin Scorsese, via Deadline
When Francesca said she was “so mad about” the lost film, Scorsese joked, “Well, tell Seth, because they ruined everything,” adding that Kim Jong Un “doesn't have a sense of humor”, Deadline reports.
How each outlet framed it
- Deadline — the joke and its follow-up: Scorsese and Rogen have since worked together. Scorsese played himself in the first episode of Rogen's Apple TV series The Studio, in which Rogen's studio boss gets Scorsese's dream project cancelled.
- Variety — the background: the hack exposed thousands of emails, including one in which producer Scott Rudin called Jolie “a minimally talented spoiled brat”, and the script was to be written by Eric Roth, who wrote Killers of the Flower Moon.
Where the accounts differ: they don't on the quotes, but they differ on blame. Variety notes that Rogen “wasn't directly responsible” for the cancellation; Deadline leaves the joke to speak for itself.