That Time Martin Scorsese Filmed 0 Minutes And Walked Away With $500,000 – Or Did He?

Summary:

• Simon Afram, who recently started working on the film adaptation of his WWII screenplay, claimed Martin Scorsese was supposed to join him in developing the movie, but ignored the whole process while taking the money away.
• The famous director joined the project in 2022, but so far, according to Afram’s team, has done nothing given that the contract was signed more than a year ago.
• Scorsese’s team retorted that Afram had been rushing things which is not common in Hollywood, on top of that being very unrealistic about the movie’s potential.

Martin Scorsese may be one of the greatest filmmakers of our time and just a very nice-looking old man that dances to Ryan Gosling ’s I’m Just Ken, but there are some people out there who claim the proclaimed director wasn’t that nice to them.

As the recent news broke, Scorsese signed up for yet another film and probably followed Taylor Swift ’s famous line “the jokes weren’t funny, I took the money” — by taking $500,000 while having done nothing.

The director boarded the project as an executive producer back in 2022 — the film was supposed to be based on Simon Afram’s World War II screenplay called Operation: Fortitude that follows events before the Allied forces’ invasion of Normandy.

Given that Afram’s team isn’t that famous in Hollywood, they sincerely hoped for Scorsese to bring in with him some other proclaimed filmmakers that could potentially lead the film right up to the prestigious awards. Turns out that their expectations were too high — with even Scorsese himself entirely ignoring the project.

The lawsuit that the team filed several years ago implies that Martin Scorsese hasn’t done anything for the film’s improvement and development even though the contract was signed more than a year ago. In simple terms, if the director has suddenly changed his mind and decided to quit the project, he could at least give back the money that he’d received in advance.

Though Scorsese doesn’t seem to have such an intention. As the director’s cross-complaint claims, he did try to get several famous Hollywood filmmakers to take part in the film — and it’s not his fault they weren’t that interested.

Besides, Scorsese gave Aaron and his team some kind of advice (with a touch of a warning) that nothing in Hollywood is made that fast, giving the example of his own film The Irishman the development and production of which took more than 10 years.

Lastly, Scorsese clearly stated that Afram should look for someone to blame not around him, but rather in his own team that, according to the director, was too self-confident to think that they could potentially create “an Academy Award-winning work of art” in a couple of years.

Though the whole drama didn’t take as long as it could — and ended just several days after with the comment from the court that the entire case was settled. Whether Martin Scorsese is still in the project or already not, so far stays a mystery.

Source: The Wrap