Martin Scorsese believes Vinyl could have succeeded if he directed all of it

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

HBO's Vinyl had plenty of potential; a $100 million budget, a star-studded cast which included Bobby Cannavale and Olivia Wilde, and the talents of Boardwalk Empire's Terence Winter and Martin Scorsese. The series revolved around Richie Finestra (Cannavale), founder and president of American Century Records, as he tried to save both himself and his company during the dawn of punk, disco, and hip-hop. However, the first season of Vinyl ended up being a flop and despite having already renewed it for a second season, HBO cancelled the series not too long after it wrapped up.

While speaking at the Rome Film Festival earlier this week, Martin Scorsese lamented the cancellation of Vinyl and wished that he had been more hands-on with the series, especially after spending 20 years developing the project with Mick Jagger. Scorsese believes that had he done more, including directing every episode of the series after the pilot, Vinyl might have survived.

It was ultimately tragic for me because we tried for one year. I did the pilot. We tried for one year with HBO, but we couldn’t get the creative elements together. It was something that I realized, in order to make it right … I think I would have had to direct every episode and be there for the three to four years.

Martin Scorsese added that in order to do a TV series right, the director should also be the showrunner. "You do everything. You do it all. … If you don’t [want to make that commitment], you shouldn’t be making the series," Scorsese said. I never actually got around to watching Vinyl, so I can't speak to whether Scorsese's continued involvement would have improved the series.

Martin Scorsese is currently in post-production on THE IRISHMAN, the much-anticipated film which Netflix will release next year, but the director's next project will see him reuniting with Leonardo DiCaprio for an adaptation of David Grann's best-selling crime thriller "Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI." The true-life mystery tale deals with the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma in the 1920s, who became quite wealthy after oil was discovered beneath their land. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off and the ensuing spiral of conspiracy, greed and murder got so bad that the FBI had to step in.