Reprising Taxi Driver

Robert De Niro plans to revisit the iconic role of Travis Bickle from the film Taxi Driver more than 30 years after the seminal film was shot, in a new collaboration with Martin Scorsese. “It is understood the project would be a collaboration with controversial director Lars Von Trier, whose film Antichrist depicted graphic scenes of extreme violence. The original Taxi Driver, made in 1976, followed Bickle, a pathological Vietnam war veteran as he developed an obsession with cleaning up the streets of New York. Peter Aalbaek, Von Trier’s producing partner at Zentropa studios, told Copenhagen film magazine Ekko he would ‘neither confirm nor deny’ the rumour, but said that an announcement would be made shortly. Paul Schrader, who wrote the original script to Taxi Driver, made in 1976, mentioned the idea of a sequel to the movie a few years ago. He told the New York Post: ‘I was talking with Martin Scorsese about doing a sequel to Taxi Driver, where [Bickle] is older.’ Martin Scorsese has also disclosed plans to team up with Robert De Niro again on a new mob movie. The director – who worked with De Nero on eight films between 1973 and 1995 – was at the Berlin Film Festival to promote his new movie Shutter Island. Scorsese said: ‘Bob De Niro and I are talking about something that has to do with that world – there’s no doubt about that.’”