The Irishman, Robert De Niro’s highly anticipated reunion with Martin Scorsese, will be receiving an added dash of nostalgia, according to producer Gaston Pavlovich. In an interview with Cinema Blend’s Gregory Wakeman, Pavlovich confirmed that Scorsese’s in-development project will employ the computer-generated-imagery technology recently used to re-create the late Peter Cushing’s character Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One, in order to de-age De Niro for certain segments of the movie. The goal is to have him look as he did back in his “The Godfather 2 days.”
“You don’t use prosthetics, make-up, they have acting and the technology is able to have them go through different time ages without the prosthetics,” Pavlovich told Wakeman. “We were able to film Bob and just do a scene, and we saw it come down to when he was like 20, 40, 60, so we’re looking forward to that, from that point of view, for The Irishman.”
The movie, which also has Al Pacino (and, maybe, Joe Pesci) attached to star, is a crime drama centered on Frank Sheeran, the man who—on his deathbed—claimed to have murdered Jimmy Hoffa. The film is based on the Charles Brandt novel I Heard You Paint Houses, and—not unlike many other Scorsese projects—has been in the works for a while, with Deadline first reporting the casting of Pesci and Pacino way back in 2010. And it should be noted that it’s likely we’ll see those two actors made to look younger as well: A year ago, DeNiro revealed the technology was being tried out on “the other actors, too.”
