Martin Scorsese Says His Angelina Jolie ‘Cleopatra’ Movie Was ‘Ruined’ by Sony Hack

Martin Scorsese revealed this week that a “Cleopatra” movie he was planning with Angelina Jolie ended up getting canceled as a result of North Korea’s Sony hack, joking, “Just because Kim Jong Un didn’t have a sense of humor.”On Thursday, Tribeca shared a wide-ranging nearly 40-minute interview between Scorsese and his daughter Francesca. During their conversation, the latter noted that Scorsese has always wanted to make “a big Roman epic.” In response, Scorsese joked, “I missed it. Ridley [Scott], he’s done [them] all.” “We were going to do ‘Cleopatra’ at one point, and then they made fun of Kim Jong [Un],” Scorsese said, referencing the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures by a North Korean state-sponsored hacker group. The infamous incident, which resulted in the leaking of troves of confidential Sony employee emails, messages and data, was carried out in response to Sony’s planned release of “The Interview,” Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s satirical takedown of the North Korean government. “[Kim Jong Un] got mad and he blew up everybody at Columbia,” Scorsese recalled. “[It] ruined ‘Cleopatra.’” “Angelina Jolie, we were going. She was Cleopatra VII. It was going to be really wild,” the filmmaker added. When his daughter said she was “so mad” that the movie never got made, Scorsese joked, “Well, tell Seth, because they ruined everything. Just because Kim Jong Un didn’t have a sense of humor, you know?” It was public knowledge for many years that Hollywood was interested in having Jolie lead an expensive “Cleopatra” movie. Filmmakers like David Fincher, James Cameron, Paul Greengrass and Ang Lee were all, at various points, either reported as being attached to the project or in consideration for it. That said, it is news that Scorsese himself was apparently close to making it. After the Sony hack, the studio hired David Scarpa to do a “Cleopatra” rewrite in 2016 and “Dune” director Denis Villeneuve was reportedly in talks to direct it in 2017. Additionally, there were reports released in more recent years stating that Villeneuve was planning to make “Cleopatra” with “Dune” star Zendaya as the project’s eponymous Egyptian queen. However, given Villeneuve’s current commitments to this year’s “Dune: Part Three” and the next James Bond film, the odds of him getting around to “Cleopatra” anytime soon, if ever, seem slim, to say the least.