Martin Scorsese has revealed that he was once close to making a Cleopatra film starring Angelina Jolie, but the project never moved forward following the fallout from the 2014 Sony Pictures hack. The filmmaker recently recalled the abandoned historical epic during a conversation with his daughter, Francesca Scorsese, jokingly pointing to Seth Rogen and the controversy surrounding his comedy The Interview as the reason the film was derailed.
Scorsese shared the story during a nearly 40-minute conversation for Crafty, Tribeca’s original interview series, released on Thursday, October 29. During the discussion, he spoke about his long-standing interest in making a large-scale Roman epic, remarking that he had missed the opportunity while director Ridley Scott had already explored the genre.
Recalling the proposed project, Scorsese said that he and his team had been preparing to make Cleopatra before the events surrounding the Sony hack changed the situation at the studio.
“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,” Scorsese said, referring to the controversy surrounding The Interview. He then added, “Seth Rogen, right? And then he got mad, and [it] ruined Cleopatra.”
The director also confirmed that Angelina Jolie was set to portray Cleopatra VII, describing the proposed film as something that “was gonna be really wild.” When Francesca expressed her disappointment that the project never happened, Scorsese continued the joke, saying, “Well, tell Seth, because they ruined everything.”
The screenplay was set to be written by Eric Roth, who later collaborated with Scorsese on Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). Although the director’s comments suggest that the project had progressed considerably, the film never reached production.
The incident Scorsese referred to took place in November 2014, when Sony Pictures Entertainment suffered a major cyberattack that resulted in the theft and public release of confidential company information, including employee emails and internal communications. The United States attributed the attack to North Korea, which was believed to have carried it out in response to Sony’s planned release of The Interview.
Directed by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, the 2014 comedy starred Rogen and James Franco and revolved around a fictional plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Its subject attracted strong objections from North Korea, and the subsequent cyberattack created a major crisis for Sony.
The leaked correspondence also brought other controversies into the public eye. Among the emails were exchanges between producer Scott Rudin and then-Sony co-chair Amy Pascal that included disparaging remarks about Jolie. These revelations added another layer to the difficult circumstances surrounding the studio and the film’s development.
However, Scorsese’s comments were made humorously, and the wider fallout from the Sony hack should not be confused with evidence that Seth Rogen personally caused the cancellation of Cleopatra. His remarks offer a glimpse into how the events affected the proposed project, rather than establishing a direct account of the studio’s decision-making.
Jolie’s involvement in a major Cleopatra adaptation had been discussed in Hollywood for several years, with various filmmakers reportedly considered or attached to the project at different stages. Scorsese’s revelation adds another notable director to that history, showing that his version was also in development before the project stalled.
Following the Sony hack, the studio hired David Scarpa to rewrite the Cleopatra screenplay in 2016. In 2017, Denis Villeneuve was reportedly in talks to direct. The project subsequently continued to attract attention, with later reports linking Villeneuve to a version featuring Zendaya as the Egyptian queen.
Scorsese’s recent comments, however, offer a new insight into an earlier stage of the film’s development and the scale of the historical epic he had envisioned with Jolie.
For now, the filmmaker’s Cleopatra remains one of the major projects that never made it to the screen. His recollection also serves as a reminder of how the fallout from the Sony hack extended beyond the immediate controversy surrounding The Interview, affecting other studio plans. More than a decade later, Scorsese’s humorous remark has brought renewed attention to the ambitious film that audiences never got to see.
