Martin Scorsese‘s “Cleopatra” never came to fruition, and he says the Angelina Jolie-starrer was nixed because of Seth Rogen and the Sony hack.
For those who need a refresher, Sony emails were hacked in November 2014 by a group that hoped the Seth Rogen comedy “The Interview,” which was about a fictional assassination attempt of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, would not be released by Sony.
According to Scorsese, this caused some aftereffects in the industry, which he described in the first episode of the Tribeca original series “Crafty.”
“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. “Seth Rogen, right? And then he got mad, and [it] ruined Cleopatra.”
Though Rogen wasn’t directly responsible for the project being canceled, the resulting hack exposed thousands of emails, including ones from producer Scott Rudin to Sony’s Amy Pascal calling Jolie “a minimally talented spoiled brat.”
“We were gonna do it,” Scorsese also said. “Angelina Jolie. We were going. She was gonna be Cleopatra VII. It was gonna be really wild.”
The film was set to be written by screenwriter Eric Roth, who wrote Scorsese’s 2023 film “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
Watch the episode of “Crafty” below.
