Marky Mark & Robert De Niro For The Departed Sequel?

More than any film of Martin Scorsese's career, The Departed proved that he had the commercial clout to back up his critical plaudits - enough commercial clout, in fact, that Hollywood's going to ride The Departed dry with a sequel sometime soon.

According to reports, The Departed scriptwriter William Monahan is working on an outline for a potential sequel to The Departed. That'd be harder than it seems, considering that just about every character ended The Departed sprawled lifeless in a pool of their own blood, but William Monahan has his own ideas about where to take The Departed. It's thought that he'll either craft a pacy police thriller in the style of the original starring Mark Wahlberg and Robert De Niro, or it'll be an enchanting musical set in a magical forest starring Jack Nicholson and Leonardo DiCaprio as two friendly ghosts trying to hilariously patch up their differences while learning several life lessons in the process. Either way, The Departed sequel probably won't be all that great.

Hands down, The Departed is Martin Scorsese's biggest-ever box office hit, taking close to $265 million to date. That's close to ten times more than Taxi Driver, over ten times more than Raging Bull and 53 times more than Kundun. Thanks to The Departed Martin Scorsese stands the best shot at finally winning a Best Director Oscar for 25 years and Mark Wahlberg's angry cop character landed him with a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, which is something we never expected after seeing The Italian Job.

But whenever any film does the business at the box office, talk of a sequel always rears its head, even when it's Martin Scorsese directing. Reuters reports that plans to make a sequel to The Departed are already under way:

It's hard to imagine a sequel to a movie like Oscar-nominated crime drama "The Departed," which ends in such a spasm of violence that hardly any of the lead characters are left alive. But almost anything is possible in Hollywood when enough money is at stake. So it should come as no surprise that a follow-up to Martin Scorsese's cops-and-gangsters thriller, the biggest box-office hit of his career, is already in the works. A person close to the situation said on Wednesday that the screenwriter behind "The Departed," William Monahan, was outlining a film script that would bring back a surviving character played by Mark Wahlberg and introduce a new role envisioned for Robert De Niro.

This The Departed sequel talk is all still completely unconfirmed by just about everyone involved. For instance, it's not known if Martin Scorsese will play any part in the sequel - chances are he'll be too busy making his film about confused priests in feudal Japan - or if he has to give permission for the film to even go ahead in the first place. And then there's the plot of The Departed's sequel. Will it go the same way as Infernal Affairs - the Hong Kong movie it was based on - and be a prequel set in a time when Jack Nicholson's strap-on cock was just a baby sapling? Or will it be a brave new story that picks up the pieces of the original The Departed? One thing's for sure - if it's a 21st century movie with Robert De Niro in it, it's bound to be crap.

But who knows, maybe making a The Departed sequel will inspire Martin Scorsese to revisit some of his best-loved films. Maybe there's room for a Raging Bull 2 - basically a shallow retread of Rocky Balboa but with more graphic scenes of pensionable domestic violence - or The Lastest Temptation Of Christ where Jesus, continuing to life as a mortal, toys with the idea of buying a PlayStation 3 even though he knows he's got several direct debits coming out of his bank account that week and he still has his doubts about the lifecycle of Blu-Ray technology.

Hey, we'd watch it.

Read more:

High Body Count Clouds Sequel To The Departed - Reuters