It has been confirmed that Joe Pesci will definitely return to the screen for a role in Martin Scorsese’s planned gangster movie The Irishman. Pesci reportedly turned down the role in the adaptation of the novel ‘I Heard You Paint Houses’ by Charles Brandt, and will now re-team with Scorsese for the fourth time after previous movies Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Casino. Deadline confirmed the key casting.
Pesci will join the other main actor from those movie, Robert De Niro, as well as Al Pacino (who is in final negotiations), Harvey Keitel and Bobby Cannavale.
Here’s a little about the source material on which this film will be based.
‘I heard you paint houses’ are the first words Jimmy Hoffa ever spoke to Frank ‘the Irishman’ Sheeran. To paint a house is to kill a man. The paint is the blood that splatters on the wall and floors. In the course of nearly five years of recorded interviews Frank Sheeran confessed to Charles Brandt that he handled more than twenty-five hits for the Mob, and for his friend Hoffa.
Sheeran learned to kill in the US Army, where he saw an astonishing 411 days of active combat during World War 2. After returning home he became a hustler and a hit man, working for legenday crime boss Russell Bufalino. Eventually Sheeran would rise to a position of such prominence that he was named as one of only two non-Italians on a list of the twenty-six most wanted Mob figures.
When Bufalino ordered Sheeran to kill Hoffa, the Irishman did the deed, knowing that if he refused, he would have been killed himself.
Sheeran’s important and fascinating story includes brand new information on other famous murders, and provides rare insight into an infamous chapter in US and Mafia history. This is a page turner that is destined to become a true-crime classic.
Pesci will play Pennsylvania Mafia boss Russell Bufalino, who may have had a hand in the disappearance of Hoffa, while De Niro plays Frank Sheeran. Al Pacino will play Hoffa, while Keitel plays crime boss Angelo Bruno. Cannavale will play “Crazy Joe” Gallo of New York’s Colombo crime family.
Shooting kicks off this month, and is expected to run until December. Netflix will fully finance and distribute with the film expected to get a cinema run to qualify for the Oscars.
