Warner Bros asked Martin Scorsese to make ‘The Departed’ into a franchise
Cinematic icon Martin Scorsese has revealed Warner Bros wanted him to make his 2006 crime thriller movie The Departed into a franchise and alter the ending to allow one of the main characters to star in another film.
The suggestion upset Scorsese, who has previously expressed his annoyance at the kind of interference that movie studios make and their obsession with creating franchises out of standalone movies.
In an interview with GQ, Scorsese told of Warner Bros’ suggestion about The Departed and the ending of the moview. He said, “What they wanted was a franchise. It wasn’t about a moral issue of a person living or dying.”
The Departed stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg and is loosely based on the Hong Kong film Internal Affairs. It’s also influenced by the real-life Boston Winter Hill gang and the corrupt FBI agent John Sullivan.
Scorsese kept the original ending of the two main characters dying and noted how, at a test screening, several members of the audience walked out after seeing the deadly finale.
“And then the studio guys walked out, and they were very sad because they just didn’t want that movie,” Scorsese said. “They wanted the franchise. Which means: I can’t work here anymore.”
In the same interview, Scorsese discussed the current state of the movie business and claimed “the industry is over” as he once knew it.
Explaining how Hollywood has changed, Scorsese said in a new interview: “Well, the industry is over. In other words, the industry that I was part of, we’re talking almost, what, 50 years ago? It’s like saying to somebody in 1970 who made silent films, ‘What do you think’s happened?’”
According to Scorcese, studios are not “interested any longer in supporting individual voices that express their personal feelings or their personal thoughts and personal ideas on a big budget. And what’s happened now is that they’ve pigeonholed it to what they call indies”.
Check out the trailer for The Departed below.
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