t’s hardly breaking new ground to call Martin Scorsese the greatest living American director. After all, the man has an impeccable pedigree with a oeuvre that includes such cinematic classics as Taxi Driver and Goodfellas. Few names of filmmakers spark such immediate love and appreciation amongst cinephiles. In recent years the director has achieved blockbuster success thanks to an ongoing collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio. With one of the biggest movie stars in filmland by his side, Scorsese has become commercially dependable for the first time since the 1970s and as a result, the man finally won his elusive Oscar for The Departed. Of course, as fruitful as this collaboration has been, it’s only the second most important actor/director collaboration in Scorsese’s career. DiCaprio is talented, but he’s sure as hell no Robert DeNiro.

Scorsese and DeNiro met in the early 70s and both broke through at the same time with the brilliant Mean Streets. The movie established Scorsese as one of the most stylish, exciting, and personal filmmakers working in America, while the scene stealing role of Johnny Boy proved that DeNiro was one of the most talented and immersive actors in the country. They soon followed that up with the Cannes-winning masterpiece Taxi Driver, the drug-addled disappointment New York, New York, one of the greatest films ever made (Raging Bull), and the criminally underrated The King Of Comedy. That streak of movies established Scorsese and DeNiro as one of the finest actor/director pairs in the history of cinema. Then they split apart from each other for a few years, but returned in the 90s with a brilliant hat trick of hits: Goodfellas, Cape Fear, and Casino. After that, they were legendary, but haven’t worked together since 1995…until now.

Sure, over the past 13 years there have been a few projects that have almost reunited the obscenely talented duo. DeNiro was originally set to play Jack Nicholson’s role in The Departed before dropping out due to a scheduling conflict and Scorsese flirted with directing The Winter Of Frankie Machine before passing that off to Michael Mann (it should begin shooting sometime next year). For whatever reason no project that DeNiro and Scorsese after tried to put together in the last decade ever took off, but now they have something that they are both excited to make and should be a perfect project for the pair. They plan to create a movie adaptation of the book, I Heard You Paint Houses.

While DeNiro and Scorsese are one of the greatest actor/director collaborations of all time, Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott have made a pretty damn good combo in recent years.

Ok, so that title is far from exciting, but bear with me here. The book was written by Charles Brandt, a writer who befriend a mob hitman named Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran. Over the course of the friendship Sheeran confessed to a number of killings including the murder and dismemberment of infamous Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa. The guy confessed to 25 murders total and Brandt put together a book outlining the man’s life and greatest hits (I know that’s a terrible joke…but I just couldn’t resist). It’ll be a little while before this sucker reaches the screen, but both DeNiro and Scorsese are committed and Oscar-winning writer Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List) has been dispatched to crank out a script.