Legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese was recently profiled by Time magazine ahead of the release of his new feature, Killers of the Flower Moon. The film, a large-canvas thriller based on the Osage Indian murders in Oklahoma in the 1920s in the United States, stars Leonardo DiCaprio alongside Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, Brendan Fraser and others.
Talking Killers and other facets of his life and career with Time’s Stephanie Zacharek, Scorsese – now in his eighties – revealed that he has multiple new ideas that he hopes to film soon. Among them are an adaptation of Marilynne Robinson’s 2008 novel Home and another film on the life of Jesus Christ. Scorsese had previously directed The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988, a film whose troubled production and run-ins with Catholic groups are well documented.
Back in May this year, Scorsese had met with Pope Francis in Rome and announced a film about the life of Jesus.
Talking about it to Zacharek, Scorsese was quoted as saying, “I don’t know what it’s going to be, exactly. I don’t know what you’d call it. It wouldn’t be a straight narrative.”
The film will build on ideas explored in his previous religion-themed film, Silence (2016), Scorsese hinted, adding, “But there would be staged scenes. And I’d be in it.”
The last revelation shouldn’t surprise fans of the Taxi Driver director. Besides a host of cameos in his own films, Scorsese has acted in movies like Round Midnight, Search and Destroy and Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, in which he famously appeared as Vincent van Gogh.
His last onscreen appearance was alongside Fran Lebowitz in his Netflix documentary series Pretend It’s a City.
