Martin Scorsese's lavish-looking short film The Audition, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Brad Pitt, isn't ready to make an impression just yet. At least, that's what the Venice Film Festival regretfully noted this morning, as they revealed next month's premiere was cancelled.
Issued in a statement to EW, festival organizers blame "unexpected technical problems" as the reason why the Melcro-Crown Entertainment commercial is having its debut delayed. When and where Scorsese and his team, also consisting of producer Brett Ratner, plan to premiere their short in light of this unexpected detour isn't known.
The Audition, also starring Scorsese himself, finds De Niro and DiCaprio butting heads when the Raging Bull director has the two "vying" for the same part in his next movie. Pitt also plays himself, but where he fits in the equation is not certain. Terence Winter, the screenwriter behind The Wolf of Wall Street and the creator behind Broadwalk Empire and the upcoming Vinyl, both of which Scorsese helped produce, was behind the scribe on this as well.
Two trailers for Scorsese's latest were posted online earlier this year, but they were taken down not long after. Though Venice is likely a little heartbroken to know they're not getting DiCaprio, Scorsese, De Niro and the gang to grace their presences at their festival, considering the rest of the line-up slated to come in a handful of weeks, they don't have many reasons to complain.
If Scorsese does, indeed, have some errors to fix on his latest, it'll be a bit of a pinch to fit the time into his busy schedule. He's currently in post-production on his latest feature film, Silence, and he's planning to make a Macbeth documentary, based on Kenneth Branagh's Second World War Leavesden Aerodom performances, sometime soon. He also wants to make a Mike Tyson biopic with Jamie Foxx, says Foxx, and is tapped to work on the Benicio Del Toro-starring show Cortes and a TV version of his Shutter Island as well. Also, Mark Wahlberg wants him to make a Boardwalk Empire movie too.
Image courtesy of Zak Hussein/INFphoto.com