Scorsese Blames Sony Hack for Killing Jolie 'Cleopatra'

Martin Scorsese has identified the 2014 Sony Pictures hack as the reason his planned 'Cleopatra' film with Angelina Jolie never entered production.

In the first episode of the Tribeca series 'Crafty,' the director explained how the cyberattack altered the film industry's risk calculation. The hack targeted Sony after Seth Rogen's comedy 'The Interview' was set for release. The film depicted a fictional assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. A group seeking to stop the movie leaked thousands of internal emails.

The leak included a message from producer Scott Rudin to Sony executive Amy Pascal. Rudin referred to Jolie as 'a minimally talented spoiled brat.' Scorsese stated that the incident made studios cautious. 'We were gonna do Cleopatra at one point, and then they made fun of [Kim Jong Un], and he got mad and blew up everybody at Columbia,' Scorsese said. 'Seth Rogen, right? And then he got mad, and [it] ruined Cleopatra.'

The project was intended to be a major visual spectacle. Scorsese described the lost opportunity in the interview. 'Angelina Jolie. We were going. She was gonna be Cleopatra VII. It was gonna be really wild,' he said. The film was to be written by Eric Roth, the screenwriter behind Scorsese's 2023 release 'Killers of the Flower Moon.'

The Sony hack occurred in November 2014. It remains one of the most disruptive digital security breaches in Hollywood history. The exposure of private correspondence led to several high-profile departures from the studio. Scorsese's comments provide a specific example of how the event affected potential projects years later.