Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman is an interesting situation. It is a film that a lot of people are discounting from the start because it’s heading to Netflix instead of the big screen, but it is a good enough project that it has attracted Martin Scorsese as the director, and a cast that includes Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci (who came out of retirement just for this film). Now we are getting some more news about the film that is going to make people even more curious, if not nervous about what to expect when it hits the screen.
It’s just been announced that the entire first half of the film will employ digital de-aging technology on the entire cast. This isn’t the first time this effect has been used, and the effect on Samuel L Jackson and Clark Gregg in the trailers for the upcoming Captain Marvel look promising. Still, there’s a big difference between making those two actors look young and turning back the clock on the 75-year-old De Niro, the 78-year-old Al Pacino, and the 76-year-old Joe Pesci.
Here’s what the film’s editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, told Yahoo Movies UK about the film:
“We’re youthifying the actors in the first half of the movie. And then the second half of the movie they play their own age. So that’s a big risk. We’re having that done by Industrial Light and Magic Island, ILM. That’s a big risk.
We’re seeing some of it, but I haven’t gotten a whole scene where they’re young, and what I’m going to have to see, and what Marty’s going to have to see is, ‘How is it affecting the rest of the movie when you see them young?’ Interestingly, we’ve only been able to screen for very few people, because they’re wearing some things on their faces, and on their clothes, that tracks their movement… Nobody minds. Nobody minds watching them play young, because they’re gripped.”