Martin Scorsese has offered a new glimpse at one of his most intriguing unrealized films: a Cleopatra project that would have starred Angelina Jolie as Cleopatra VII and been written by Eric Roth.
Speaking in the first episode of the series Crafty, Scorsese said the picture had been moving forward before the fallout surrounding the 2014 cyberattack on Sony changed its trajectory. “We were gonna do it,” Scorsese said of the proposed historical drama. “Angelina Jolie. We were going. She was gonna be Cleopatra VII. It was gonna be really wild.”
The director connected the project’s collapse to the hacking incident that followed the controversy around The Interview, the Seth Rogen comedy built around a fictional plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The released material included a vast cache of internal emails, and the broader disruption appears to be what Scorsese means when he describes the incident as having “ruined” Cleopatra.
“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.”
That phrasing is necessarily a compressed account of a complicated episode. Rogen was not responsible for the film’s cancellation, and the supplied record does not establish a single formal decision or one person as the cause. What it does show is that the leaked correspondence placed the Jolie-led project in an especially uncomfortable position. Among the exposed emails was a message from producer Scott Rudin to Sony executive Amy Pascal that insulted Jolie, calling her “a minimally talented spoiled brat.”
For a major studio picture dependent on a director, star, writer and corporate backing remaining aligned, that kind of public rupture can be more consequential than a normal creative disagreement. A project can survive a draft change, casting discussions or a delayed schedule. It is much harder to preserve momentum when private correspondence involving major participants becomes public and reshapes the working environment around a film.
What Scorsese’s description tells us about the unmade film
The confirmed ingredients are unusually clear, even if the project never reached production: Scorsese would have directed, Jolie would have played Cleopatra VII, and Roth was set to write the screenplay. Roth later wrote Scorsese’s 2023 film Killers of the Flower Moon, a connection that indicates the filmmaker and screenwriter ultimately did collaborate, just not on this particular historical epic.
Cleopatra VII was the final active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, making the role a natural focal point for a drama built around power, diplomacy and public image. But it is important not to fill in the blanks with assumptions. Scorsese’s comments do not identify the script’s approach, its period scope, supporting cast, production design, budget, release plan or how closely it would have followed any particular historical account. “Really wild” communicates Scorsese’s enthusiasm, not a confirmed description of the story.
Related coverage includes Martin Scorsese Revisits Unmade Angelina Jolie ‘Cleopatra’.
That distinction matters because unmade films accumulate mythology quickly. A director and a star attached to a recognizable historical figure can inspire audiences to imagine a finished work with all the detail of an announced production. Here, the grounded takeaway is more limited but still fascinating: Scorsese says there was a real plan, it involved Jolie as Cleopatra VII, Roth was writing, and circumstances following the Sony breach helped stop it.
The practical damage of a leak goes beyond spoilers
The story is also a reminder that a cyberattack on an entertainment company can affect far more than release schedules or confidential documents. In this case, internal communication was exposed at enormous scale. Private assessments, interpersonal disputes and negotiations that would ordinarily remain inside a company suddenly became part of public discussion.
In film development, “development” is the stage in which a project is assembled and shaped before cameras roll. It can involve screenplay drafts, negotiations, financing conversations, scheduling and approvals. It is inherently collaborative, but it also depends on candid internal communication and durable relationships. A leak can damage both at once: it reveals material never intended for public consumption while making continued cooperation between the people named in that material much more difficult.
Scorsese’s recollection does not turn the hack into a tidy one-step explanation. Rather, it points to a chain of fallout. The controversy over The Interview was followed by the Sony breach; the breach exposed emails; and the resulting atmosphere affected a film that was still being assembled. That is different from claiming the comedy itself directly canceled another movie, and it is why the distinction around Rogen’s responsibility is essential.
There is a broader lesson for anyone watching how large entertainment projects come together. A movie is not only a script plus a cast list. It is also a network of trust between filmmakers, performers, producers and executives. The public often encounters that network only after a project has been formally announced, but an unmade film can be vulnerable long before then.
An unrealized collaboration with unusually strong creative stakes
Scorsese and Jolie alone would have made the proposed film notable. Adding Roth gives it another layer of interest. The screenwriter’s later work on Killers of the Flower Moon demonstrates that his connection to Scorsese was not a speculative pairing that vanished with Cleopatra; it became part of a completed Scorsese production years later.
Still, viewers should resist treating that later credit as evidence of what the Cleopatra screenplay would have been. Writers and directors adjust their methods from project to project, especially when moving between different historical subjects. The available details establish Roth’s intended role, not the plot or finished shape of his draft.
Likewise, Jolie’s casting as Cleopatra VII tells us the project had a central performance in place, but not what version of the queen the film intended to emphasize. Cleopatra is one of history’s most recognizable figures, and the name often brings immediate expectations about romance, conflict and imperial politics. None of those elements can be assigned to this unrealized film as confirmed features without further information.
What Scorsese has provided is perhaps more valuable than an overbuilt reconstruction: a direct acknowledgment of a project that nearly existed and a frank sense of why it did not. His comments place Cleopatra among those movie-world near-misses where the creative package was impressive, the surrounding events were extraordinary, and the finished film remains unknowable.
Why the story remains relevant
Unmade projects usually disappear into the background because there is no trailer, theatrical run or final cut to revisit. This one remains compelling because each confirmed piece is significant: a filmmaker with Scorsese’s stature, Jolie in the title role, Roth on the script, and a cyberattack whose consequences reached well beyond one disputed comedy.
It also illustrates why reporting on a project’s collapse requires careful language. Scorsese’s personal account is important evidence of how he understood the derailment. Yet the known record supports a more precise framing than a simplistic blame chain. The 2014 hack exposed communications, including hostile remarks about Jolie from Rudin to Pascal, and Scorsese says the resulting fallout ended his Cleopatra plans. That is the meaningful connection—not a claim that Rogen personally decided the film’s fate.
For readers interested in how the entertainment business can be reshaped by public controversies, the episode sits alongside other industry stories where distribution, corporate planning and creative partnerships collide. Joking Joystick has also covered the pressure points around film exhibition in its look at reported Imax booking decisions involving a Netflix film.
Scorsese’s Cleopatra is not newly revived by these remarks, and no new production timetable, casting expansion or release prospect has been indicated. It remains an unrealized project. But the director’s account gives it a firmer place in the history of films that were close enough to take shape—and vulnerable enough to be undone by events outside the script.
