Netflix funds $105m for Scorsese's The Irishman

Netflix has successfully secured the rights to Martin Scorsese's upcoming biographical crime film The Irishman. To bag the rights to the highly anticipated film, Netflix paid a whopping $105 million for its smooth production. Based on the book by Charles Brandt: “I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran and the Inside Story of the Mafia, the Teamsters, and the Final Ride by Jimmy Hoffa,” The Irishman chronicles the life of mob hitman Frank Sheeran, who allegedly confessed on his death bed to murdering his good friend Jimmy Hoffa. Hoffa was the union leader, whose disappearance remains one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in American history, along with a number of others. With Scorsese in the helm and a stellar cast featuring the some of the finest thespians of Hollywood, including the likes of Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, Bobby Cannavale, Ray Romano, Stephen Graham and Kathrine Narducci, the film has been garnering a lot of attention since it was first announced. Oscar-winning actor Robert De Niro will don the title role of Sheeran, in his ninth collaboration with Scorsese, while Al Pacino, another Oscar winner, will be seen in the role of Hoffa. Despite his six-decade spanning career and being a good friend of De Niro, surprisingly The Irishman would be Al Pacino's first project with Scrosese. “With its decades-long story, it will take advantage of the modern computer graphics technology that would de-age the actors, similar to what Marvel Studios did with Robert Downey Jr. in Captain America: Civil War and Michael Douglass in Ant-Man,” reports Screenrant. The film, which was shortly dropped by Paramount Pictures, was picked up the popular streaming giant stepped in with a steep budget for the long-planned gangster film, which was already in pre-production phase. It has been reported that the deal with Netflix will allow sharing the film to not only their 93 million subscribers but will also boost their subscriptions. Shooting for The Irishman is already underway in New York. The film is expected to get an Oscar-qualifying theatrical release in 2018.