Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Irishman’ Officially Wraps Expensive Production
Production has officially wrapped on Martin Scorsese’s long, expensive shoot for his new Netflix movie The Irishman, based on the real life of Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran and his stories of working as a mob hitman, and getting the Goodfellas gang back together again.
Scorsese celebrated the end of shooting on his Instagram Monday night.
The Irishman is based on Charles Brandt’s book I Heard You Paint Houses about the years Sheeran worked as a hitman for various mob bosses. He carried out at least 20 hits and rumor has it he was involved in the death of Jimmy Hoffa, the famous labor leader who disappeared in July 1975 and was never heard from again.
Scorsese’s The Irishman is already one of Netflix’s most expensive productions to date, a lengthy shoot and intricate post-production process driving the price tag up from $125 million to somewhere around $150 million in the last couple of months. And work on the project is far from over: what makes it so expensive is the post-production work on many of the actors, de-aging their faces and bodies to make them look like younger versions of themselves, as most of the story is told in flashbacks. Industrial Light and Magic, the studio that performed the same trick with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, will handle that.
The Irishman is angling for a 2019 release date.