Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman to digitally de-age Robert De Niro

'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'

Between Peter Cushing’s return in Rogue One and the arrival of young Anthony Hopkins in Westworld, 2016 has seen some interesting and controversial use of CGI.

It looks like Robert De Niro will be the next A-lister to be replicated/altered on screen, when he re-teams with Martin Scorsese for new mob film The Irishman.

De Niro will play the titular irishman, a real-life hitman called Frank Sheeran who murdered 25 people and claimed to have been involved with union leader Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance in 1975.

To portray his younger years, they 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 told CinemaBlend.

“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.”

Seeing De Niro back in his Taxi Driver-era prime will indeed be cool, but something about the whole CGI de-ageing process unsettles me a little - hopefully it’ll be used sparingly in the film.

Earlier in the week, Scorsese discussed his next film with Leonardo DiCaprio, The Devil in the White City.