The Rick Moranis comeback tour continues. Just days after the Spaceballs star came out of retirement to reprise his role for The Goldbergs, Netflix confirms the SCTV comic legend will return for Netflix’s upcoming reunion special directed by Martin Scorsese.
As it turns out, rumors of Joe Pesci’s involvement in The Irishman have not been greatly exaggerated. Although Pesci’s name has been attached to reports about Martin Scorsese’s mob drama since its inception several years back, recent updates cast some serious doubt on the actor’s involvement. That changed today, as Pesci — along with Bobby Cannavale and Harvey Keitel — has officially joined the cast of The Irishman, which marks his fourth collaboration with Scorsese and Robert De Niro.
Sound the alarm emojis — last night brought a new update on the slow gestation of Martin Scorsese’s next feature film project, the mob drama The Irishman. It’s already a hot property, boasting a cast including Marty favorites Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci along with newcomer Al Pacino, who already spent the last two decades acting as if he was in the third act of Goodfellas anyhow. “Martin Scorsese doing another crime epic with some of today‘s greatest living actors” turned out to be quite the tantalizing prospect, too, because last night brought the news that Netflix has purchased the rights to the film right out from under Paramount.
Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas won just one Oscar (for supporting actor Joe Pesci) at the 1991 Academy Awards. (The year’s Best Picture winner was Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves.) But the film seems to grow more popular and critically acclaimed every year, to the point where it’s now considered one of Scorsese’s masterpieces, one of the best movies of the 1990s, and perhaps the best gangster film ever made without the word “godfather” in the title. Astonishingly (at least it feels astonishing to an old man like me), it’s been 25 years since Goodfellas made its debut in theaters, an anniversary Scorsese and his cast and crew will celebrate next month with a 25th anniversary screening and reunion at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.