Martin Scorsese says the studio behind The Departed wanted Leonardo DiCaprio or Matt Damon’s character to survive so they could make a franchise

• Martin Scorsese says Warner Bros. wanted to make “The Departed 2”.
• He said executives wanted DiCaprio’s or Damon’s character to survive the end of the film.

If it were up to Warner Bros., 2006’s The Departed would have launched a franchise of gritty police dramas. Martin Scorsese had other plans.

Scorsese was still recovering from the grueling process of making the 2004 Howard Hughes biopic “The Aviator,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio, for Warner Bros. when the studio came calling again. They had secured the rights to remake the hit 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs and wanted Scorsese to take on the project.

After Scorsese agreed and began filming the film, which cast DiCaprio and Matt Damon as Massachusetts State Police officers straddling the line between the law and Boston mob corruption, the director said the studio approached him to see if he could will any of them survive?

“They wanted a franchise,” Scorsese told GQ. “This was not about a moral issue of human life or death.”

Scorsese didn’t like this and stood his ground, killing off Damon and DiCaprio’s characters by the end of the film. According to Scorsese, the shock of the ending sent audiences at test screenings into “ecstasy.” But not the suits at Warner Bros.

“Then the studio guys left and they were very sad because they just didn’t want the movie. They wanted a franchise,” Scorsese said. “This means: I can’t work here anymore.”

(Insider contacted Warner Bros. for comment but did not receive an immediate response.)

The Departed was a major milestone for Scorsese not only because it earned him his first Oscar for best director, but also because it was the last time he worked for Warner Bros., the studio that, along with The Aviator, “, also released “Goodfellas” and his breakthrough film “Mean Streets.”

Scorsese’s most recent films have been independently financed and released through a studio or streamer. His latest film, Killers of the Flower Moon, will be released theatrically on Paramount and then available to stream on Apple TV+.

Studios, Scorsese told GQ, are “no longer interested in supporting individual voices that express their personal feelings or their personal thoughts, personal ideas and feelings, within the confines of a big budget. they call it indie.”

“The danger is what it does to our culture,” Scorsese said of studios specializing in franchises. “Because now there will be generations who will think that movies are just what movies are.”