Movies
DEBUNKED: Martin Scorsese-Robert De Niro-Lars Von Trier ‘Taxi Driver’ Collaboration
UPDATE: This story has been debunked, and a big congrats to Variety for confirming the validity of it. Sigh. Well, it looks like I deserve a smack across the face (or maybe not: see above). Mocking the news earlier today (here), it has been confirmed that Martin Scorcese, Lars von Trier and Robert de Niro could all be collaborating on a modern remake of the classic film Taxi Driver, with De Niro reprising his role as Travis Bickle. You can read all of the buzz beyond the break. Chime in with your thoughts, I’m feeling quite perplexed.
From Variety:
“Berlin and the Internet have been abuzz with rumors of a Martin Scorsese-Robert De Niro-Lars Von Trier collaboration — and, at least for the time being, they appear to be true.
The idea behind the project is similar to the film “The Five Obstructions” that Von Trier and Danish helmer Jorgen Leth made in 2003. In that film, Von Trier challenged his colleague Leth to do a remake of his own 1967 film “The Perfect Human.” Von Trier gave Leth the task of remaking five times, each time with a different obstacle, such as making the film animated.
In the new project, Von Trier will challenge Scorsese and De Niro to remake their 1976 classic “Taxi Driver.”
The story took on a life of its own after a Danish newspaper published an interview in which Peter Aalbaeck Jensen, von Trier’s business partner and executive producer, said he could neither confirm nor deny the rumors.
“There will be a statement coming shortly,” he said — although another Danish source confirmed the collaboration.
Scorsese is in Berlin to tubthump his thriller “Shutter Island,” which unspooled Saturday night here, while von Trier drove down from Copenhagen to be a part of the pre-sales meetings of his forthcoming sci-fi film “Melancholia.” That film is to be shot within the next year, so the Scorsese collaboration would probably have to wait.
Over the weekend, when Scorsese was doing press in Berlin, he did not mention the Von Trier project, as discussion focused on features in pre-production, such as a 3D adaptation of Brian Selznick’s novel “The Invention of Hugo Cabret.” ”
It’s been eight years since Ari Aster came onto the scene and helped usher in a new wave of horror with Hereditary, one of the rare horror movies from the past ten years that still seems to come up in conversation every single week. And it’s back in the conversation this week, with Ari Aster revealing at an event that he’s already written a prequel to Hereditary!
Ari Aster was on hand at the American Cinematheque for Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair last week, a Los Angeles festival that screened all of Aster’s movies to date. The website Gold Derby reports that Aster revealed the Hereditary prequel script during a Q&A at the event, and you can watch the full Q&A conversation below for confirmation on the website’s report.
“I wrote a prequel to this,” Aster told the crowd, referring to Hereditary. “It never feels like the right time to do it. It’s a prequel, not a sequel so I don’t know where this goes.”
Would a potential Hereditary prequel dig deeper into the mythology of demon king Paimon? Unfortunately, Aster provides no further details on his prequel approach at this time.
Aster said of Hereditary during the same Q&A, “I was just trying to make a really good horror movie.” I think most horror fans would agree that he more than accomplished that goal, and the past eight years have proven that Hereditary is an enduring classic of its generation.
We celebrated the fifth anniversary of Hereditary here on BD back in 2023.
Ron Breton wrote, “Hereditary offers a similar emotional resonance to this new generation of horror – my generation of horror– as movie-goers in the seventies when they first saw Exorcist. Much like Aster’s film, we see the incomprehensible evil wear the face of a young girl; the victim of a raw deal she had no say in, as it tears a family to its core. Sure, both films offer so many terrifying visuals that can make the hair stand up on anyone’s neck – but it also depicts intense relationships and emotions that are tangible. Real. Familiar.”
“In that familiarity lies the uncanny, ready to rear its ugly head and force us to confront thoughts and horrors laying dormant and clawing at our psyche,” Breton continued his 5th anniversary celebration of Hereditary. “And it doesn’t matter if it’s been five or fifty years. These horrors are always there, as we become pawns in its horrible, hopeless machine.”
Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Ann Dowd, and Milly Shapiro star in Hereditary. In the film, “A grieving family is haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences.”
That’s putting it mildly, eh?!
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