Scorsese Unleashes Shocking Details: Angelina Jolie's Cleopatra Ruined by Sony Hack and Seth Rogen
Legendary director Martin Scorsese has disclosed that his ambitious 'Cleopatra' film, intended to star Angelina Jolie, was ultimately canceled due to the infamous 2014 Sony Pictures hack and its dramatic aftermath. The cyberattack, triggered by Seth Rogen's 'The Interview,' exposed damaging emails and created an environment that derailed the high-profile project.
Martin Scorsese has revealed that his ambitious "Cleopatra" film, slated to star Angelina Jolie, ultimately never came to fruition due to the significant fallout from the 2014 Sony Pictures hack. Scorsese shared these insights into the project's cancellation during the inaugural episode of the Tribeca original series, "Crafty," directly linking the unfortunate demise of the film to the cyberattack's wide-ranging repercussions across the industry.
The catalyst for the infamous Sony hack in November 2014 was a group's attempt to halt the release of Seth Rogen's satirical comedy, "The Interview." This film portrayed a fictional assassination plot against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a premise that sparked considerable international controversy and subsequently triggered the massive cyberattack on Sony's digital infrastructure. Scorsese vividly recalled the chain of events that led to his project's downfall, stating, "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."
While Seth Rogen's film was the instigator, he was not directly responsible for the "Cleopatra" project being canceled. Instead, the real damage came from the thousands of confidential emails exposed during the hack. These emails included a particularly scathing exchange between producer Scott Rudin and Sony's Amy Pascal, where Rudin controversially labeled Angelina Jolie as "a minimally talented spoiled brat." Such public disclosures of internal disagreements and disparaging remarks created an intensely volatile environment, making it exceedingly difficult for a high-profile, star-driven project like "Cleopatra" to move forward.
Scorsese expressed his enthusiasm and vision for the film, reiterating, "We were gonna do it. Angelina Jolie. She was gonna be Cleopatra VII. It was gonna be really wild." The screenplay for this epic undertaking was to be penned by the esteemed Eric Roth, who also wrote Scorsese's 2023 feature film, "Killers of the Flower Moon." Despite the clear artistic intent and significant talent attached, the pervasive negative atmosphere and industry instability caused by the Sony hack ultimately led to the project being shelved, preventing Scorsese's unique take on "Cleopatra" from ever reaching the silver screen.