Martin Scorsese has finally explained why his grand Cleopatra movie with Angelina Jolie never made it to the big screen. The Oscar-winning director says the project was ready to go, with a finished script and Jolie set to play the famous Egyptian queen. Then Seth Rogen made a comedy about North Korea, and everything fell apart.
Scorsese shared the story during a nearly 40-minute conversation with his daughter Francesca Scorsese for Tribeca’s video series Crafty. The interview went viral this week, more than a decade after the events he describes. The filmmaker pointed to the 2014 Sony Pictures hack as the reason his Cleopatra movie was canceled. The hack was carried out in response to Rogen’s comedy The Interview, which showed a fictional plot to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Scorsese’s comments were first reported by Variety, Deadline, and Entertainment Weekly on October 30 and 31, 2026.
What Scorsese Said About the Lost Cleopatra Film
Scorsese did not hold back while talking to his daughter. He described the chain of events in plain terms and joked about the reason behind the studio attack.
“We were gonna do Cleopatra at one point, and then they made fun of [Kim Jong Un], and he got mad and blew up everybody at Columbia. Seth Rogen, right? And then he got mad, and [it] ruined Cleopatra.”
— Martin Scorsese on Tribeca’s Crafty
He then made clear how close the film was to being made.
“We were gonna do it. Angelina Jolie. We were going. She was gonna be Cleopatra VII. It was gonna be really wild.”
— Martin Scorsese
Francesca, visibly disappointed, said, “Seth, you ruined Cleopatra! I’m so mad about it.” Scorsese replied, “Well, tell Seth, because they ruined everything. Just because Kim Jong Un doesn’t have a sense of humor.”
The director also revealed that Eric Roth, who later wrote Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, had finished the screenplay. “Eric Roth was ready on the script. Everyone was ready,” Scorsese said in the interview, according to ComingSoon. The film was set to be a large-scale historical epic, the kind of Roman-era project Scorsese had wanted to make for years. He joked that Ridley Scott had already made all the Roman epics, saying, “I missed it.”
The Long History of the Cleopatra Project
The Cleopatra film was not a new idea when Scorsese became involved. Sony Pictures had been trying to make a Cleopatra movie for years, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff. Producer Scott Rudin optioned the book back in 2006 when it was still a short proposal, according to Empire Online.
Jolie became attached to star early on. James Cameron was in talks to direct a 3D version in 2010, but he chose to focus on his Avatar sequels instead, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter. Paul Greengrass, David Fincher, and Ang Lee were all linked to the director’s chair at different points. Fincher came closest before Scorsese. He was working on the project with screenwriter Brian Helgeland, but he left to make Steve Jobs instead. The Playlist noted that Fincher’s exit upset Jolie, and that tension later showed up in the leaked emails.
Helgeland later described his script to Inverse and Variety in 2024. He called it a mix of romance and “a political thriller with assassinations and sex,” focused on Cleopatra’s relationships with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. He said the film was “almost made.”
Scorsese was reportedly in talks to direct the film in December 2014, as GeekTyrant and other outlets reported at the time. Leaked emails later showed that Jolie was eager to work with him and even offered to fly out to make her case directly. Scorsese came on board. According to World of Reel, Scorsese wanted Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis to join Jolie, which would have reunited the Gangs of New York stars as Caesar and Antony. The film never entered production.
How The Interview and the Sony Hack Changed Everything
The Interview was a comedy directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. It starred James Franco and Rogen as two television journalists recruited by the CIA to assassinate Kim Jong Un, played by Randall Park. North Korea reacted angrily to the film. In November 2014, a hacker group calling itself Guardians of Peace attacked Sony Pictures‘ computer network. The group stole tens of thousands of internal documents, private emails, employee records, and financial data, and released them online in waves.
The FBI later concluded that the North Korean government ordered the hack. The attackers also threatened violence against theaters that planned to show The Interview. Major cinema chains pulled out, and Sony canceled the wide release before eventually making the film available online and in a limited number of theaters. President Obama publicly criticized Sony’s decision to pull the film, saying the company had made a mistake.
The hack did more than disrupt one comedy. It exposed private conversations across Hollywood and changed the careers of several executives. Scorsese’s Cleopatra project became one of the most visible casualties.
The Leaked Emails That Ended the Cleopatra Dream
The Sony hack released thousands of emails, including a heated exchange between producer Scott Rudin and Sony co-chair Amy Pascal. In one message, Rudin called Jolie “a minimally talented spoiled brat.” He complained that Jolie had delayed the Cleopatra project for 18 months while she directed Unbroken. He also warned that the big-budget film could hurt both his and Pascal’s careers, according to The Guardian and The Daily Beast.
The emails made the Cleopatra project a public mess. Pascal faced intense scrutiny. She stepped down as co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment in February 2015, less than three months after the hack. TheWrap published a timeline of the fallout, noting that the leaked emails and the chaos around The Interview led directly to her departure.
Jolie did not publicly respond to the leaked comments at the time. The damage was already done. Scorsese’s version of Cleopatra was shelved, and the project went quiet.
What Happened to the Cleopatra Movie After the Hack
Sony did not give up on Cleopatra right away. In 2016, the studio hired David Scarpa to rewrite the script, according to TheWrap. In 2017, Denis Villeneuve was in talks to direct after finishing Blade Runner 2049. More recently, reports linked Villeneuve to a Cleopatra film with Zendaya in the lead role. Those plans have not moved forward. Villeneuve has been busy with Dune: Part Three and the next James Bond film.
Gal Gadot and director Patty Jenkins were also planning their own Cleopatra film in the early 2020s, but that project stalled as well. The role has not returned to Jolie. The 1963 Cleopatra film with Elizabeth Taylor remains the most famous Hollywood version of the story.
Scorsese moved on to other films, including Silence, The Irishman, and Killers of the Flower Moon. The Cleopatra film remains one of the most famous movies never made.
Scorsese and Rogen Are Not Feuding
Scorsese’s comments about Rogen are clearly in jest. The two filmmakers have since worked together. Scorsese played a fictional version of himself in the first episode of Rogen’s Apple TV series The Studio, which debuted in 2025. In the show, Rogen’s character, a studio head named Matt Remick, ends up canceling a passion project from Scorsese’s character. The storyline mirrors what happened with Cleopatra in a funny, meta way.
Rogen co-directed every episode of The Studio and has spoken warmly about working with Scorsese. “It was very scary working with Martin Scorsese until it happened, and then it was very fun,” Rogen told Entertainment Weekly. “I had barely ever met him. We sent him the script and we just heard, ‘He loves it.’” Scorsese’s appearance on the show made it clear there is no bad blood between the two.
Entertainment Weekly reached out to Rogen’s representatives for comment on Scorsese’s Cleopatra remarks. No public response from Rogen has been reported.
What the Lost Film Would Have Looked Like
Details from the leaked emails and from Helgeland’s interviews paint a picture of a film that could have been one of the biggest Hollywood epics of the decade. Helgeland told Inverse that his script focused on Cleopatra’s love affairs with Caesar and Antony, with the scale of a historical epic and the tension of a political thriller. Scorsese’s version would have added his own style and his long-standing interest in power, loyalty, and betrayal.
The casting would have been extraordinary. Angelina Jolie as Cleopatra VII, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis possibly joining her. DiCaprio and Day-Lewis had worked with Scorsese before, and the idea of the three of them in a Roman-era epic drew attention even in leaked internal emails. Pascal reportedly called Scorsese’s version “very complicated.” The film would have been expensive, ambitious, and risky, which is exactly why the studio was nervous about it even before the hack.
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The Cleopatra film is now a permanent part of Hollywood’s “what could have been” list. Scorsese’s comments have brought it back into the conversation more than a decade after the Sony hack. The director is still clearly disappointed.
“I’m so mad about it.”
— Martin Scorsese, on the Crafty interview
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