Martin Scorsese is close to the rock community thanks to his successful documentaries on The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and George Harrison, but he hasn’t directed a feature film about a rock group...yet. The master filmmaker is reportedly attached to helm a biopic on punk rock icons The Ramones.
In a story about how the estates of the band members plan on celebrating the band’s 40th anniversary, Billboard revealed that the Departed director is currently attached to the project. No further details about that project was announced, but it will be accompanied by several other projects, including a documentary, a book and stage play.
“The 40th anniversary of the Ramones is coming up in 2016, that’s when the first album came out. So we have a lot of projects leading up to that. We’re looking at a documentary on the Ramones, we just secured a ton of footage, much of which has never been seen before,” Jeff Jampol, who co-manages the band’s estate, told Billboard of the documentary.
Tommy Ramone, the last surviving member of the band’s original line-up, died back in July at age 65.
It’s not entirely clear when Scorsese will have time to make the Ramones movie, but it seems unlikely that he could get it done by 2016. He is currently working on the long-gestating Silence, which will be his first film since last year’s The Wolf of Wall Street. Mike Tyson also seemed confident that Scorsese would work on his biopic.
In addition to those film projects, he has an untitled rock ‘n’ roll pilot in the works for HBO. He also agreed to do a Shutter Island prequel series for the network.
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