The Economics of The Irishman

Netflix spent about $160 million on The Irishman, the most expensive film Martin Scorsese ever directed, and almost nobody bought a ticket to it. It went to the Academy Awards with ten nominations and won nothing. And the murder the whole movie is built around, the killing of Jimmy Hoffa, was confessed to by exactly one man, whose account the FBI’s own forensic work would later contradict. Two prices sit inside this film. One that Hollywood paid, and one that was never actually for sale.

In this video, we break down the complete economics of The Irishman: the de-aging experiment that pushed a $125 million plan to a final budget of about $159 million, the moment Paramount and the film’s first financier walked away from it, why the only company that would write the check was one that does not sell tickets, and the single uncorroborated confession the entire “true story” rests on.

Discover how Industrial Light and Magic rebuilt the faces of Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci across 1,750 visual effects shots and a 209-minute runtime, using a markerless three-camera rig instead of tracking dots, at an estimated cost near $15 million. See why the major theater chains refused to play the film at all, because Netflix would not honor the roughly 90-day exclusive window that fills their seats.