Earlier this year, Martin Scorsese had everyone picturing Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Sinatra with Jennifer Lawrence by his side as Ava Gardner.
But now, the director’s long-in-the-works Sinatra biopic looks like it has stalled again.
Variety reports that Scorsese’s story about the Hoboken crooner has been postponed.
His Sinatra movie was supposed to film this year, as was “The Life Of Jesus,” based on the 1973 novel by Shūsaku Endō.
Instead, both movies have reportedly been pushed back.
Variety says the Sinatra film even had a November start date before it was canceled in August.
One hurdle Scorsese, 81, has historically faced is getting the blessing of Sinatra’s daughter Tina Sinatra, 75, who controls the singer’s estate.
Frank Sinatra died in 1998, when he was 82.
Left: Frank Sinatra with Ava Gardner in 1951, the year they got married. Right: Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence in 2021. DiCaprio and Lawrence would reportedly play Sinatra and Gardner in Martin Scorsese’s Sinatra biopic, which has been delayed.Bettmann; Taylor Hill | FilmMagic
Talk of Scorsese’s would-be Sinatra biopic first emerged in 2009.
Originally, the movie was attached to Universal Pictures, with screenwriter Billy Ray (“Captain Phillips,” “Richard Jewell”) and Tina Sinatra as a producer. Then Michael Chabon came along with a script that drew from Tina Sinatra’s Frank Sinatra memoir “My Father’s Daughter.”
But in 2017, Scorsese told the Toronto Sun the Sinatra family had ended his plans for a film on Sinatra.
“They won’t agree to it,” the Oscar-winning director told the paper. “Open it up again and I’m there!”
It’s unclear if Tina Sinatra has been back onboard or not since the film’s development process started to get back up and running.
Frank Sinatra circa 1940 with his first wife, Nancy Barbato Sinatra. Hulton Archive via Getty Images
While DiCaprio, who has starred in six of Scorsese’s films — most recently “Killers of the Flower Moon” — had long been attached to play Sinatra, a new reported addition was his fellow Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence as Ava Gardner, who was Sinatra’s second wife.
In 1939, Sinatra married Nancy Barbato Sinatra in Jersey City. They had three children — Nancy Sinatra, Frank Sinatra Jr. and Tina Sinatra.
Frank divorced Nancy Barbato Sinatra to marry screen siren Gardner in 1951 and Gardner filed for divorce from Sinatra in 1954.
Sinatra’s first wife was 101 when she died in 2018.
When the earlier version of the Sinatra film came to a halt seven years ago, Scorsese said the Sinatra family had objected to dark material in the script.
“Certain things are very difficult for a family, and I totally understand,” he told the Sun. “But, if they expect me to be doing it, they can’t hold back certain things. The problem is that the man was so complex. Everybody is so complex — but Sinatra in particular.”
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Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at [email protected] and followed at @AmyKup.
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