Scorsese Says Sony Hack Ruined His Cleopatra Plan — SkimNews
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- Martin Scorsese said on Tribeca's Crafty, speaking with daughter Francesca Scorsese, that the North Korean state-sponsored Sony hack — a response to Seth Rogen's 2014 film The Interview — "ruined everything" for his planned Cleopatra feature.
- Cleopatra was to star Angelina Jolie as Cleopatra VII, with the script finished and the production set to go; Scorsese recalled, "We were going. She was gonna be Cleopatra VII. It was gonna be really wild."
- Kim Jong Un was the target in Scorsese's account: the filmmakers "made fun of" the dictator, "he got mad and he blew up everybody at Columbia," the studio attached to the project.
- Seth Rogen drew a tongue-in-cheek rebuke from Scorsese, who told Francesca to "tell Seth, because they ruined everything," joking that Kim Jong Un doesn't have a sense of humor.
- The Interview was co-written and directed by Rogen and Evan Goldberg, casting James Franco as Dave Skylark, Rogen as Aaron Rapaport and Randall Park as Kim Jong Un, with the CIA enlisting the pair to assassinate the dictator.
- The Studio, Rogen's Apple TV series, featured Scorsese playing himself in its debut episode last year, with Rogen's studio chief Matt Remick responsible for axing Scorsese's passion project — a storyline the article flags as life imitating art.
Why it matters: A ready script and a committed star — Angelina Jolie as Cleopatra VII — were derailed by a state-sponsored attack rather than creative decisions, a grievance Scorsese now mines for punchlines on Tribeca's "Crafty." His cameo in *The Studio*, where Rogen's character kills a passion project, turns the anecdote into a self-aware industry story.
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