Robert De Niro to be digitally de-aged in Martin Scorsese’s new film
We’ve seen the effects of digitial de-aging in recent films such as Star Wars: Rogue One, and now Martin Scorsese will implement similar technology in his upcoming gangster film.
Scorsese will digitally de-age Robert De Niro in his biopic The Irishman. De Niro is set to star as real-life mob hitman Frank Sheeran. But to portray the many years of Sheeran’s life in crime, Scorsese will make the iconic actor look digitally younger.
The Irishman producer Gaston Pavlovich revealed the news to CinemaBlend:
“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.
“So we’ve seen some tests and it looks extraordinary. We were able to film Bob and just do a scene. 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 … Imagine seeing what De Niro looked like in The Godfather: Part II days, that’s pretty much how you’re going to see him again.”
“We were able to film Bob and we saw it come down to when he was like 20. You’re going to see what De Niro looked like in The Godfather II days again”
Scorsese and De Niro haven’t worked together since 1995’s Casino. But the director was keen to reunite with the actor:
“He is the only one left alive who knows who I am. It [this film] will be emotional. I’m not saying it will be a recreation of the kind of films we made up until Casino. It’s going to be something else. But we wanted to be together again.” He told Time Out.
The Irishman is set for 2018. While, Scorsese’s latest film Silence hits screens on 6th January.