Martin Scorsese says the fallout from the Sony hack derailed a planned Cleopatra film that was set to star Angelina Jolie as Cleopatra VII.
More than a decade after the North Korean state-sponsored digital attack shook Hollywood, the Oscar-winning director revisited the project during a conversation with his daughter, Francesca Scorsese, on Tribeca’s Crafty. According to Scorsese, the screenplay was ready and the production had been preparing to move forward before the hack “ruined everything.”
The attack came in response to Seth Rogen’s 2014 film The Interview, which centered on a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Scorsese Says the Script Was Ready
Scorsese used blunt shorthand while recalling how the cyberattack affected the planned movie.
“Remember we were gonna do Cleopatra at one point, and then they made fun of [Kim Jong Un], and he got mad and he blew up everybody at Columbia,” he told Francesca. “Seth Rogen, right? And then he got mad, and [it] ruined Cleopatra.”
The director emphasized that the project was not merely a distant possibility. His account placed it at a point where the script and intended star were already in place.
“We were gonna do it. We were ready on the script. Angelina Jolie—We were going,” Scorsese said. “She was gonna be Cleopatra VII. It was gonna be really wild.”
Francesca told her father that she was “so mad about” what happened to the film. Scorsese answered with a joke aimed at both Rogen and the North Korean leader.
“Well, tell Seth, because they ruined everything,” he said. “Just because Kim Jong Un doesn’t have a sense of humor.”
How The Interview Fits Into the Story
Rogen and Evan Goldberg co-wrote and directed The Interview. The film follows celebrity tabloid-show host Dave Skylark, played by James Franco, and producer Aaron Rapaport, played by Rogen, after they secure a rare interview with Kim Jong Un.
Randall Park portrayed the North Korean leader. Once the CIA learns about the planned interview, the agency recruits Skylark and Rapaport to assassinate him.
Scorsese’s comments connect the hack’s wider consequences directly to his unrealized Cleopatra project. He did not provide additional production details beyond the completed script preparations, Jolie’s intended role and his description of the movie as “really wild.”
A Later Scorsese-Rogen Collaboration
Despite Scorsese’s joking assignment of blame, he and Rogen have since worked together. Scorsese appeared as himself in the debut episode of Rogen’s Apple TV series The Studio last year.
That appearance carried an especially pointed parallel. In the series, Rogen plays studio head Matt Remick, whose actions leave him responsible for Scorsese’s passion project being axed.
The fictional setup now has an added layer after Scorsese’s account of Cleopatra: in both cases, a project he cared about was stopped by circumstances involving Rogen. Scorsese’s Crafty remarks, however, were delivered humorously and did not suggest that the two remain at odds.
ShowBiz Take
Scorsese’s recollection matters because it establishes how far his Cleopatra plans had progressed before the Sony hack’s fallout intervened. The director says the script was ready, Jolie was going to play Cleopatra VII and the project was preparing to move ahead.
It also turns Scorsese’s appearance in The Studio into an even sharper entertainment-industry in-joke. The Apple TV episode placed Rogen’s character at the center of a Scorsese project’s demise; off screen, Scorsese now says the real-world consequences surrounding a Rogen film helped bring down another one.
For now, the clearest surviving picture of Scorsese’s unrealized Cleopatra comes from the director himself: Jolie in the title role, a script ready to go and an ambitious vision that never reached the screen.