The Big Picture
- Warner Brothers put pressure on Martin Scorsese to turn The Departed into a franchise, but Scorsese believed that killing off one of the main characters was the right way to end the film.
- Scorsese felt discouraged by the idea of a studio demanding sequels and stated that if he had to make films that way, he would have to stop making films altogether.
- Mark Wahlberg pitched a spinoff movie for his character, but the pitch did not go well and nothing was fleshed out for a potential sequel.
Even though his resume of all-time classics spans longer than most directors’ entire careers, Martin Scorsese had to wait until relatively recently to take home his first Academy Award wins for Best Director and Best Picture for the 2006 action crime thriller The Departed. It couldn’t have been a more deserving victory; with its genuine nastiness and dark sense of humor, The Departed did for Boston crime movies what Goodfellas did for New York mafia flicks. Although The Departed closes the loop on its own story (as only a few characters survive the events of the film), Warner Brothers had originally pressured Scorsese into turning the series into a franchise. There’s a very different world out there where The Departed was the first installment in what could have become a blockbuster saga.
Warner Brothers Wanted a Sequel to ‘The Departed’
The Departed was Scorsese’s first Best Picture winner, but it wasn’t his first remake; Scorsese had previously remade the classic horror film Cape Fear in 1991 with Robert De Niro. The Departed was inspired by the Hong Kong action trilogy Infernal Affairs, which told a twisty crime story revolving around the relationships between a criminal gang and the cops that were pursuing them. The Departed swapped the Hong Kong setting for modern Boston, and used the film to explore themes about generational sin in the Irish mafia. The film took loose inspiration from the crimes of the infamous criminal Whitey Bulger in its depiction of Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson).
The Departed examines a desperate attempt by the Boston Police Department to finally root out Costello’s organization and put him behind bars. As Captain George Ellerby (Alec Bladwin) closes in on Costello’s deal to ship foreign weaponry to Massachusetts, a secret unit of cops led by Captain Charlie Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Staff Sergeant Sean Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) decides to dispatch an undercover agent into Costello’s network. Although Trooper Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) is able to infiltrate Costello’s inner ring, the cops don’t realize that Costello is working alongside Staff Sergeant Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) to predict their moves ahead of time.
The character of Colin Sullivan was inspired by the character Senior Inspector Lau Kin-ming (Andy Lau) in Infernal Affairs, an undercover spy in the Hong Kong police force. Although The Departed ends with a shocking closing scene in which Colin is assassinated by Sean (who discovers that he was the undercover agent), Lau actually survives the events of Infernal Affairs. He’s also a slightly more likable character, who pays respect to his fellow serviceman Chan Wing-yan (Tony Leung), who went undercover in Hong Kong’s criminal triad. Chan resembled Billy’s character in The Departed.
Although Lau had appeared in two sequels to Infernal Affairs, Scorsese felt that killing off Sullivan was the right way to end the movie; the film opened with a scene featuring a young Colin receiving groceries from Costello, and it ended with him being shot as he took groceries home to his own apartment. His death signified that a debt had been paid. However, Scorsese revealed in an interview with GQ that Warner Brothers insisted that one of the main characters survive, and that it “wasn’t about a moral issue of a person living or dying” for executives that wanted a franchise.
Scorsese said that Warner Brothers’ disappointment with the film’s conclusion, which negated the possibility of sequels, made him feel like he could no longer work in Hollywood. He admitted that he “realized that I couldn’t work if I had to make films that way ever again,” and that if “that was the only way that I was able to be allowed to make films, then I’d have to stop.” Thankfully, The Departed was released as Scorsese originally intended, and became one of the biggest hits of his career. It was actually his highest-grossing film until The Wolf of Wall Street passed it in 2013.
Scorsese’s discouragement at the notion of a studio demanding sequels is understandable, as he has consistently pushed for originality in film. Often a vocal critic of comic book movies and Hollywood’s lack of originality, Scorsese has only occasionally flirted with established intellectual property in his work. To date, he has only directed one sequel: 1986’s The Color of Money, which was a continuation of the classic 1961 gambling drama The Hustler. Scorsese has continued to encourage young filmmakers to avoid getting sucked in by the studio system and hired to do blockbuster franchise films.
Mark Wahlberg Pitched a Spinoff Movie
Although Scorsese wasn’t interested in developing a sequel to The Departed, Wahlberg felt that the franchise had a future. His character Sean Dignam was one of the few players still left alive at the end of the film alongside Baldwin’s Captain Ellerby. Wahlberg had also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance, and felt that the character had a future. He worked alongside the first film’s screenwriter, William Monahan (who had won the Academy Award for Best Adapted screenplay for his work on the film), to develop a potential sequel that would have paired Wahlberg alongside actors like Brad Pitt and Robert De Niro.
Unfortunately, Wahlberg revealed that “the pitch didn’t go very well,” and Monahan “didn’t have anything fleshed out.” Although Monahan didn’t end up developing a The Departed sequel for Wahlberg, the pair ended up reuniting on the 2014 remake of The Gambler and the 2015 crime thriller Mojave. Wahlberg ended up joining a few very different franchises a few years later with his roles in the Transformers and Daddy’s Home series. Monahan would go on to direct a series of acclaimed crime thrillers, including Edge of Darkness, Body of Lies, and this year’s Marlowe.
Although The Departed is certainly one of Scorsese’s best films, it’s not necessarily one that demands a sequel; the story itself is wrapped up, and the film doesn’t suggest any further adventures for the main characters. Although a Sean Dignam spinoff certainly would have been entertaining, it’s best that The Departed simply exists as a standalone. If Scorsese wasn’t interested in a sequel, then there’s no reason that one should exist.
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