Scorsese blames the 2014 Sony hack and Rogen's The Interview for ending a planned film with Jolie as Cleopatra VII.
Martin Scorsese has blamed Seth Rogen and the 2014 Sony hack for the end of a planned Cleopatra film starring Angelina Jolie. In the first episode of Tribeca's series Crafty, he told his daughter Francesca Scorsese what happened to the project.
"We were gonna do Cleopatra at one point, and then they made fun of [Kim Jong Un], and he got mad and blew up everybody at Columbia," Scorsese said. He named Rogen and said the fallout ruined the film. Rogen's 2014 comedy The Interview was about a fictional assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Sony emails were hacked in November 2014. EW reports that the FBI concluded the North Korean government ordered the hack. Variety notes that Rogen was not directly responsible for the project being canceled, but the hack exposed thousands of emails, including ones from producer Scott Rudin to Sony's Amy Pascal calling Jolie "a minimally talented spoiled brat."
Scorsese said the film was close to happening. "We were gonna do it. We were ready on the script," he said. The script was set to be written by screenwriter Eric Roth, who wrote Scorsese's 2023 film Killers of the Flower Moon.
Scorsese was clear about who would have played the lead, Angelina Jolie:
"She was gonna be Cleopatra VII. It was gonna be really wild."
Francesca noted that her father has always wanted to make a Roman epic. Scorsese joked: "I missed it. Ridley [Scott], he's done [them] all."
When Francesca said she was "so mad" that the film never got made, Scorsese replied: "Well, tell Seth, because they ruined everything. Just because Kim Jong Un doesn't have a sense of humor."
TheWrap reports that after the Sony hack, the studio hired David Scarpa for a Cleopatra rewrite in 2016, and that Denis Villeneuve was reportedly in talks to direct it in 2017. TheWrap says Villeneuve's current commitments to this year's Dune: Part Three and the next James Bond film make the odds of him getting to the project soon, if ever, seem slim.
Rogen and Scorsese have since worked together. Scorsese played himself in the first episode of Rogen's Apple TV series The Studio. Rogen, who co-directed every episode, said: "It was very scary working with Martin Scorsese until it happened, and then it was very fun."
Entertainment Weekly has reached out to representatives for Rogen for comment.
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