Scorsese, De Niro, Pesci, and Pacino Definitely Doing 'Irishman', Possibly Not Doing '8½'-esque Spin-Off of That

Good news if you were hoping the above photo would one day be recreated with Al Pacino standing in for Spike Lee: that's almost surely going to happen. Talking to MTV, Robert De Niro responded to earlier rumors that he, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino would eventually be teaming up for Martin Scorsese's film on Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran (based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses), saying:

"[W]e do have the one that we're definitely doing. Me, Joe Pesci, Pacino and Marty Scorsese directing."

But what of the other, crazy, semi-autobiographical meta-film De Niro once spoke of shooting in tandem with the Irishman film, "using footage from 'Paint Houses' to do another kind of [film that is] reminiscent of a kind of '8 1/2,' 'La Dolce Vita,' [a] certain kind of biographical, semi-biographical type of Hollywood movie — a director and the actor — based on things Marty and I have experienced and kind of overlapping them"?

That one's not so certain--which is a shame, because a Scorsese-based version of Michael Winterbottom's A Cock and Bull Story, with De Niro, Pacino, and Pesci bickering about screen time, is something I'd like to see. Alas, the Little Fockers co-lead said of the project:

I would like it to happen if we can get it going [but] the other idea is more ambitious, to do one with Eric [Roth, writer of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button] doing a flashback/flashforward kind of thing and to do two movies in one and then separate them as movies. I don't know if that will happen."

Sorry, but it sounds like Meet the Parents franchise behind-the-scenes featurettes will probably remain our primary source of De Niro-shooting-a-movie entertainment.