Reverse Angle:
Scorsese reunites with De Niro.
Netflix and Marty
There’s a lot to unpack with news of Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” his first project with Netflix.
It’s a return to the mob for Scorsese — based on Charles Brandt’s nonfiction book “I Heard You Paint Houses,” about the fate of Jimmy Hoffa. It’s his reunion with Robert De Niro. It’s De Niro’s reunion with Al Pacino.
After Paramount dropped out of the project, Netflix reportedly has taken on a $125 million budget. That’s a major gamble, considering it’s generally assumed that a movie has to gross double its budget to break even, and only three Scorsese films have made more than $250 million worldwide (“Wolf of Wall Street,” “Shutter Island” and “The Departed” — and Leonardo DiCaprio is not in this cast).
Netflix is collecting plenty of honors for its original TV series, but despite plaudits for movies such as “Beasts of No Nation” and “Tallulah,” film awards have eluded it. So has box office success of any kind, as “Beasts” earned only $90,777 and other releases, such as its Adam Sandler movies, have done well in streaming numbers but haven’t gone to theaters. Figures for such limited releases as Brad Pitt’s “War Machine” aren’t readily available.
Trivia question
What is Robert De Niro’s biggest worldwide grosser (unadjusted for inflation)?
The end of the universe?
The Justice League Universe seemed ill conceived from the start, rushing headlong to catch up to “Marvel’s The Avengers.”
With the pingponging of the Flash movie production and concept, and the announcement of a Scorsese-produced Joker movie that would not be part of the JLU continuity, the center seemed not to be holding. Then DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson told Vulture that the company now says, “There’s no insistence upon an overall story line or interconnectivity in that universe.”
Does that mean that some DC movies will have, say, Jared Leto’s take on the Joker while others have someone else’s? Apparently so. Leto is not playing the Joker in the Scorsese production, but is in “Suicide Squad 2.”
The company plans to launch another brand to handle their “stand-alone” movies that supposedly would allow greater freedom to filmmakers.
More indie film grants
SFFILM and the Kenneth Rainin Foundation have announced there will be 14 finalists for the newest SFFILM/Rainin Filmmaking Grants. The twice-yearly awards are supposed to total around $250,000 (in spring of this year, it was $300,000). The number of projects receiving grants varies as well — eight this spring, six in fall 2016 and seven the spring before that.
Previous awardees have included “Patti Cake$,” “Short Term 12,” “Fruitvale Station” and the Oscar-nominated “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”
The winners, however many there may be, will be announced in November. For more information, including the list of 14 current finalists, go to www.sffilm. org/makers.
Trivia answer
“Meet the Fockers” (2004), $516.6 million. Michael Ordoña is a Los Angeles freelance writer. Twitter: @michael ordona