Hailed as one of the most profound, visionary filmmakers in the history of cinema, he’s now set for his next big venture after Silence, a big-budget, start-studded project called The Irishman. 

The ambitious mobster masterpiece will come with a powerhouse cast, one that seems almost too good to be true: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel and Scorsese himself. 

This is the first time all the legends will come together onscreen. But the maestros have worked with each other in the past. Scorsese has teamed up with De Niro 9 times before but it’ll be his first time with Pacino. Pesci and De Niro shot to greater fame after their hit, Goodfellas.

So this will be a pretty grand reunion.

The dark, intense crime drama is adapted from the novel, I Hear You Paint Houses, written by Charles Brandt. The biopic is based on Frank “the Irishman” Sheeran, a hitman who was involved in the mysterious disappearance and infamous death scandal of Jimmy Hoffa in the mid-70s.

Robert De Niro will take the lead role of Frank, and his character will be “de-aged” or made to appear several years younger by using CGI, the same technology that was used for Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

In a hugely surprising move, Netflix has bought the worldwide rights of the movie for an eye-popping $105 million. The streaming giant is entering the cinema business with a big bang. 

This means that Scorsese has parted ways with Paramount, the studio that brought to us movies like The Wolf Of Wall Street with the iconic director. Apparently, Paramount has been suffering from heavy losses and can’t afford to “risk” making a movie of such colossal magnitude. To be released exclusively on Netflix, The Irishman is ready for more than 94 million viewers across the globe. The year of release is set to be 2019.

But the greatest news is that with this new undertaking, Scorsese returns to the gangster genre. The man has had his biggest hits in iconic movies such as Mean Streets, Goodfellas, The Departed and Casino. By showing the mafia underworld in a whole new light, Scorsese managed to expose mobsters as much more than criminals. He changed the way people looked at this previously stereotyped genre in movies. He once said,

“I wanted to dispel the conventional notion that you can recognise gangsters from the way they dress and the wicked way they look. I wanted the audience to see the film on a human level and deal with gangsters as human beings. It just happens that they extort from people, they kill people. But they still have a sense of humour. They still have mothers, wives and children.”

Well, this is going to be one highly anticipated blockbuster. Fans of the actors and director will be waiting with bated breadth for the action to unfold on the big date. After the amount of time, money and effort being put in, we’re really, really, really hoping the movie is what we expect it to be. And that’s nothing less than a record-breaking golden classic, destined to go down in history.

No pressure, Mr. Scorsese. You do your thing.