Martin Scorsese's long-developing 'Sinatra' biopic may be dead

Image from The Tracking Board

By Darian Scalamoni

            There’s some bad news for people who have been waiting anxiously for news on Martin Scorsese’s long-gestating biopic on legendary singer, Frank Sinatra. Michael Chabon, who wrote one draft of the film, revealed in an interview with Vulture that the project is dead.

            In the interview, Chabon said “I was working on a Frank Sinatra project for a while, and I read Tina Sinatra’s memoir of her father (My Father’s Daughter). She called him ‘Daddy’. It would’ve been so cool. Scorsese was going to direct it, and I wrote the script.” Obviously this was one of many projects that Scorsese has in development as he also has biopics for Mike Tyson, The Ramones and a project titled The Devil in the White City starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Silence, another project that he’s been working on for years is set to be released next month starring Andrew Garfield and Liam Neeson. After that, he’s set to direct The Irishman starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.

            Ironically enough, Sinatra was set to star Pacino as the titular singer and De Niro as Dean Martin when it was first developed in the 90’s. Since then, DiCaprio, George Clooney and Johnny Depp were linked to playing Sinatra as well. I’m incredibly disappointed as I thought there was massive potential for a project like this. Scorsese is one of my favorite filmmakers of all-time and would’ve been perfect for this project. Hopefully the project will be brought back to life at some point, even if Scorsese just produced the film.