The Irishman: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese discuss upcoming Netflix gangster drama

Martin Scorsese’s gangster drama, _The Irishman_ , had its premiere at the 57th New York Film Festival  on 27 September. The Netflix film is about the reflections of a former Jimmy Hoffa associate and hitman. Robert De Niro plays Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran,  Al Pacino portrays Jimmy Hoffa, while Joe Pesci is Russell Bufalino. [caption id=“attachment_7447011” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] Robert De Niro in a still from The Irishman. Twitter[/caption] In a recent interview with Variety, De Niro and Pacino, as well as Scorsese, opened up on the film, and working with each other. The Irishman not just marks De Niro’s first collaboration with Scorsese, but is also the director’s return to the gangster genre since The Departed in 2006, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, and Matt Damon. “I always thought it should be the three of us. We’ll probably never be doing this kind of movie ever again,” says De Niro. “It’s Bob and Marty in a world they understand, have researched and know better than anybody else,” is how Pacino describes the film to Variety.  I Heard You Paint Houses, a 2004 non-fiction book by homicide investigator and prosecutor Charles Brandt, has inspired the film. Although the rights of the book were brought way back in 2007, the cost production and scheduling issues hindered Scorsese from moving ahead with the project. Pacino says that he was unsure whether the film was even going to be made. The Irishman has a whopping budget of $175 million, where much of the money was spent in de-aging the actors, so they could play younger versions of themselves. Due to the increasing bill, Paramount, in 2017, dropped the distribution rights, which were later taken up by Netflix. Scorsese explains there was a need to make such an expensive film. Due to the rapid change in the movie business, they would have not received funding from people they could have approached in the past. But when they reached out to Netflix, both parties “agreed on everything.” Pacino discussed how he and De Niro always competed for the same roles. Both actors were a part of The Godfather: Part II (1974), but it was not until Heat (1995) that they shared screen space. The Irishman cast also includes Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, Jesse Plemons, Bobby Cannavale, Sebastian Maniscalco, and Anna Paquin.