Scorsese to film Sinatra's life story

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Martin Scorsese will tell Frank Sinatra’s life story on film.

The Academy Award-winning director of The Departed will direct Sinatra, the first feature film about Ol’ Blue Eyes’ life, Universal Pictures and Mandalay Pictures said recently.

The film will be “an unconventional biopic,” said Mandalay Pictures president Cathy Shulman, who is co-producing the film with Mandalay chairman Peter Guber.

“It’s not a cradle-to-the-grave traditional portrait of the consecutive events in a man’s life,” Shulman said. “Instead it’s more of a collage and, in many ways, it will feel like an album itself. It’s a collection of various moments and impressions in his life and together we hope they’ll tell the full story and present full themes.”

Screenwriter Phil Alden Robinson (Field of Dreams) has spent “at least a year buried in 30,000 pages of research to write the screenplay,” Shulman said.

No casting decisions have been made and no production date has been determined, she said, adding: “It’s everyone’s hope that this will be a movie that comes to the screen shortly.”

It took two years to secure the rights to Sinatra’s life and music, Shulman said. Warner Music Group and the Sinatra estate are partners on the project.

Having Scorsese bring Sinatra to the screen “seems like a match made in heaven,” she said.

Sinatra’s daughter, Tina, said it was “personally pleasing” to know Scorsese would oversee the celluloid version of her father’s life story.

“My father had great admiration for the talent of the people he chose to work with, and the talented people who worked with my father had great admiration for him,” she said, adding, “to me that this paradigm continues with Marty Scorsese at the helm of the Sinatra film.”

An iconic entertainer, Sinatra was known for his smooth voice and even smoother personal style. He was part of the Rat Pack that included Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford.

Sinatra “was indisputably the 20th century’s greatest singer of popular song,” according to Rolling Stone.

Sinatra, who died in 1998, performed on more than 1,400 musical recordings, was awarded 31 gold records and earned 10 Grammys. He also appeared in 58 films and won an Oscar Best Supporting Actor award for 1953’s From Here to Eternity. In 1971, he was presented with another Oscar: The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.