Martin Scorsese opens up about losing his Angelina Jolie Cleopatra project

Martin Scorsese has opened up about a major film project that never made it to the big screen. The acclaimed filmmaker was once set to direct a historical drama about Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII, with Angelina Jolie attached to play the lead role. However, the project was caught up in the fallout from the 2014 Sony Pictures cyberattack, which followed the controversy surrounding Seth Rogen's comedy The Interview.

Martin Scorsese recalls his abandoned Cleopatra film with Angelina Jolie

Martin Scorsese has opened up about a major film project that never made it to the big screen. The acclaimed filmmaker was once set to direct a historical drama about Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII, with Angelina Jolie attached to play the lead role. However, the project was caught up in the fallout from the 2014 Sony Pictures cyberattack, which followed the controversy surrounding Seth Rogen's comedy The Interview.

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The filmmaker revisited the abandoned project during a conversation with his daughter, Francesca Scorsese, for Tribeca's Crafty interview series. When the discussion turned to films he had wanted to make, Francesca brought up Cleopatra, recalling her father's interest in directing a large-scale historical epic.

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The director stated, "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,” the Wolf of Wall Street filmmaker said. “Seth Rogen, right? And then he got mad, and [it] ruined Cleopatra.”

How did Seth Rogen's film become linked to the Sony hack?

The controversy dates back to 2014, when Sony Pictures faced a major cyberattack after the dispute surrounding The Interview, a comedy starring Rogen and James Franco. The film follows two journalists who become involved in a fictional plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The film's subject matter drew objections from North Korea, and the subsequent hacking incident exposed thousands of confidential company emails, internal communications and documents. The FBI later attributed the attack to the North Korean government.

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The leaked correspondence also brought private exchanges between senior Sony figures into public view, adding to the turmoil surrounding the studio. Scorsese's comments connect the fallout from that period to the fate of his planned historical drama. While he jokingly singled out Rogen, his remarks point to the wider controversy and the Sony hack rather than suggesting that the actor personally cancelled the film.

Scorsese and Rogen later worked together

Despite the filmmaker's playful complaint, Scorsese and Rogen later shared a screen project. Scorsese appeared as himself in the first episode of Rogen's Apple TV series The Studio, which follows the chaotic workings of a Hollywood film studio.

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The unmade Cleopatra remains a missed collaboration between Scorsese and Jolie, with the filmmaker's latest recollections offering a glimpse into how close the ambitious project came to taking shape.