The story surrounding 2014’s Seth Rogen-fronted comedy, The Interview, remains one of the strangest and craziest stories in movie history. Rogen’s edgy comedy — which centers on a plot to killing North Korea’s president, Kim Jung Un — created a major global incident. It was a massive problem for Columbia Pictures, and then-President Barack Obama had to address said film in regard to the protection of free speech. While I knew all that, I wasn’t aware that Martin Scorsese ended up having one of his own projects squashed as a result.
Scorsese recently sat down with his daughter, Francesca Scorsese, to talk about his creative process, ideas he wants to explore and some of his biggest cinematic influences. During the interview. the director revealed that he actually planned on making a Cleopatra movie. However, after The Interview created chaos at the studio, Columbia (a subsidiary of Sony), they ended up dropping the project. He told Tribeca:
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. …. He ruined Cleopatra.
This is such a major bummer, and a crazy way for a movie to get squashed. For more context, after The Interview was announced by Sony and given a release date, North Korea was upset about the implications of the film. It was the North Korean government’s belief that the movie represented an act of terrorism and, in time, there were threats of violent retaliation if the film wasn’t pulled.
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A month before Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s movie came out, the now-infamous Sony hack occurred and thousands of confidential information and correspondence was leaked. The FBI concluded that North Korea intiated the attack, despite the country denying responsibility.
Based on what Martin Scorsese‘s comments, Sony may have been trying to do damage control after the hack, and Cleopatra was collateral damage. This truly is unfortunate, because it seems like the cameras were close to rolling on the historical epic. The Oscar winner said they even had a script worked out and a major actress was also attached:
We were gonna do it. Eric Roth was ready on the script. Angelina Jolie, we were going…. She was Cleopatra the seventh. It was going to be really wild.
I’m so saddened to hear this, given how cool the idea seems, and I would’ve loved to have seen this on the big screen. Scorsese only jokingly blamed Seth Rogen for the situation, though. At the end of the day, and I think Scorsese would agree, Rogen made a movie that was provocative, and it led to an extreme reaction. Later in the interview, Scorsese even mused that the issue stemmed from North Korea not having a sense of humor. Since the controversy went down Rogen has admitted to being traumatized by the situation, but ultimately, his country backed his right to free speech.
While Cleopatra didn’t see the light of day, Scorsese went on to make incredible work instead of the biopic. He directed both Silence and The Irishman in the years that immediately followed, which may or may not have happened if he was busy with Cleopatra. Ultimately, it may have been for the best, and who knows, maybe another studio will revive that 2014 script in the future.
Martin Scorsese fans can check out his latest film, Killers of the Flower Moon, which is currently streaming with an Apple TV+ subscription. You can also now revisit the hoopla-causing comedy, The Interview, which is available to rent on Prime Video.