Martin Scorsese Sued

Martin Scorsese might be one of the top directors in Hollywood today, but it seems like he may have held up the wrong production!

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, August 22, in the Los Angeles Superior Court, Cecchi Gori Pictures claims Scorsese contractually agreed in 1990 to direct an adaptation of the Japanese novel Silence, a drama about the persecution of Christians in 17^th-century Japan by their emperor. Cecchi Gori Pictures states in the legal documents that it has already forked out $750,000 to start the project.

Scorsese originally delayed the project to focus first on his 1997 film, Kundun. He then delayed it further to work on The Departed, Shutter Island, and Hugo. Cecchi Gori agreed to the deferment, so long as Scorsese paid the fee required to delay the film.

One of the main points of contention leading to the filing of the lawsuit, however, is that the company is claiming Scorsese has still not paid the deferment fines, which lay somewhere between $1.25 and $1.5 million per film that the project was delayed for, as well as a percentage of what each film earns.

The straw that broke the camel’s back and lead to the lawsuit was Scorsese having the gall to once again delay Silence in favor of working on his next film, The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

According to the filing, Cecchi Gori Pictures is requesting to have its contract with Scorsese either completely recreated with new criteria and deadlines, or to have it ended completely. The company is also requesting unspecified compensatory damages, interest, and court costs.

Scorsese is the winner of an Academy Award, a Palme d’Or, multiple Emmy and Golden Globe Awards, BAFTAs, and DGA Awards, as well as an AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to cinema. Some of his most significant films include Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed.

Scorsese is the founder of The Film Foundation, created in 1990, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation.  In 2007, he also founded the World Cinema Foundation.

Needless to say, with those credentials, it’s no wonder Cecchi Gori Pictures waited so long and is still fighting so hard to keep Scorsese focused on their project.