Netflix picks up Martin Scorsese’s new film The Irishman starring Robert De Niro

The source material's title, 'I Heard You Paint Houses', is mob slang for contract killings, referencing the blood that splatters the walls

(Getty)

Netflix has now become a dominant force in film as well as TV, and today it acquired worldwide right to one of the biggest films in the Hollywood pipeline.

The Irishman will reunite director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro, centring on real life mobster Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran and being adapted from the 2004 book I Heard You Paint Houses.

It will be the pair’s ninth collaboration, following on from classics like Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Casino and Goodfellas.

Expected to start shooting next year, The Irishman sees Scorsese back in his mafia comfort zone after the experiment that was Silence, the phrase “I heard you paint houses” being mob slang for contract killings (referencing the blood splattering the walls).

To portray Sheeran’s younger years, the film won’t be going down the different actor or prosthetics route.

“You don’t use prosthetics, make-up; they have acting and the technology is able to have them go through different time ages without the prosthetics,” producer Gaston Pavlovich previously said of their CGI plans.

“So we’ve seen some tests and it looks extraordinary. We were able to film Bob and just do a scene. We saw it come down to when he was like 20, 40, 60, so we’re looking forward to that, from that point of view, for The Irishman.

“Imagine seeing what De Niro looked like in The Godfather: Part II days, that’s pretty much how you’re going to see him again.”

Scorsese has another film in the works right now, a Leonardo DiCaprio-starrer called The Devil in the White City.