Martin Scorsese says Seth Rogen 'ruined' his planned Cleopatra film

 Martin Scorsese has revealed that he was going to make a “wild” Angelina Jolie-led Cleopatra film, but Seth Rogen and his controversial comedy The Interview derailed the project.

In a conversation with daughter Francesca for Crafty, a new interview series from Tribeca, the filmmaker brought up the ill-fated film when asked if he had always wanted to make “a big Roman epic”.

“We were gonna do Cleopatra at one point,” he said. “And then they made fun of Kim Jong Un, and he got mad and blew up everybody at Columbia. Seth Rogen, right? And then [Kim] got mad, and [it] ruined Cleopatra.”

“Seth, you ruined Cleopatra. Ruined Cleopatra,” Francesca joined in.

The 2014 comedy starred Rogen as television producer Aaron Rapoport and James Franco as celebrity interviewer Dave Skylark, who manage to secure an interview with Kim Jong Un but end up being recruited by the CIA to assassinate the North Korean leader.

The film, directed by Rogen and Evan Goldberg, did not go down particularly well with Pyongyang, which objected to its portrayal of the leader. In June 2014, a spokesman for the country's foreign ministry threatened a “resolute and merciless response” if the film was released.

“The act of making and screening such a movie that portrays an attack on our top leadership is a most wanton act of terror and act of war, and is absolutely intolerable,” the spokesman said in a statement.

North Korea even took its complaint to the UN, accusing the US of “sponsoring terrorism” by allowing the film to be made and distributed.

Sony, which owns Columbia Pictures – the studio behind Scorsese’s planned Cleopatra – was then hit by a massive hack a few months later in November. A group calling itself the Guardians of Peace leaked confidential emails, employee information, and unreleased films, and threatened cinemas over the planned release of The Interview.

The FBI blamed North Korea for the attack, although Pyongyang denied involvement.

Sony initially pulled The Interview from its planned Christmas Day release, after major US cinema chains refused to screen it following the hackers’ threats. It was later released online and shown in a handful of independent cinemas on Christmas Day.

The hack also exposed some blunt emails about the Cleopatra project itself. In messages to Sony co-chair Amy Pascal, producer Scott Rudin was furious about the prospect of making the film with Angelina Jolie and wrote: “There is no movie of Cleopatra to be made (and how that is a bad thing given the insanity and rampaging ego of this woman and the cost of the movie is beyond me).”

In another email, Rudin described Jolie as “a minimally talented spoiled brat” and warned that the film could become “a giant bomb”. He also called the proposed production a “$180m ego bath”, adding that he was not interested in “destroying my career” over it.

“We were going to do it,” Scorsese said of the project, adding that Killers of the Flower Moon screenwriter Eric Roth and Jolie were all “ready”.

“We were going. Angelina Jolie was Cleopatra. That would be – she’s Cleopatra VII. It was going to be really wild,” he said.

As Francesca mentioned how “mad about it” she was, Scorsese told her exactly where to point the blame. “Well, tell Seth, because they ruined everything. Just because Kim Jong Un doesn’t have a sense of humour, you know.”

The Independent has reached out to representatives for Rogen for comment.