Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro on how The Irishman wouldn’t have happened without Netflix

It turns out this was NOT an easy movie to get made.

You would assume that there are certain people in Hollywood that would have no problem getting a movie made. Spielberg. Cameron. Nolan. And, of course, Martin Scorsese. JOE headed over to the London Film Festival to join the rest of the press conference for The Irishman, where the director and stars told the room that they thought the movie would end up going nowhere, convinced that the single script read-through, with everyone in the room - including Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci - would be as far as it got. Perhaps it was the epic scale of the story, set over several decades and requiring cutting edge technology to make it believeable, or perhaps it was the reported $159 million budget that had most production companies backing away from the project. However, Netflix stepped up and now, after years in development, The Irishman will arrive in Irish cinemas on Friday 8 November, before being available on the streaming service from Friday 29 November. "It was a movie that evolved," said De Niro. "Could it have been done earlier? Yes. But the book came out and that took so many years to evolve. We actually had problems getting rights to the story, there was a lot of confusion there too, that took a bit of time. "You always see these movies, especially in the old days, that say '15 years in the making! Finally on the big screen!' This is what it's all about, everything from legal, to scheduling, actor's availability, the director's availability, the whole thing. "But we were just happy we were able to make it. I had a great time, I would've shot for another five, six months with Marty." Scorsese later told the crowd: "There is a problem, in that you have to make the film. We'd run out of room, there was no room for us to make this picture, for many different reasons, I guess. Ultimately, there was a financial issue, too, in terms of the CGI that we did. "Taking that and having the backing of a company that said 'You will have no interference, you will make this picture as you want', the trade-off is it streams with theatrical distribution prior to that. I figure that is the chance we take on this particular project." Clip via Netflix