Martin Scorsese on 'The Irishman': 'I was accused of endangering the theatrical experience'

Prepare yourself for Martin Scorsese's epic new production, "The Irishman." There's already big Oscar buzz swirling around the nearly four hour film and its all-star cast.

In a special "On Location" edition of "Popcorn With Peter Travers," Scorsese talks about how it all came together, including his surprising partnership with Netflix.

"There was concern when I did 'Irishman' for Netflix as possibly altering or affecting in a negative way the theatrical experience," Scorsese said.

He went on, "It made me then think about what is the theatrical experience, when I was accused of endangering the theatrical experience, by making this film with Netflix. And then I looked at the theaters and most of the theaters are playing superhero films ... so I thought it was time for us to start to think about what constitutes cinema."

Acting greats Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci star in the film about organized crime.

While the big studios were not interested, Netflix agreed to back the project. The movie will be in theaters for three weeks before moving on to the streaming site. Scorsese told Travers it was De Niro who initially sparked the idea for the film.

"He came up here and we were talking about this book (I Heard You Paint Houses) and described this character to me of Frank Sheeran," he said. "I hadn't read the book yet. And he became quite emotional describing it."

De Niro's passion for the project convinced Scorsese to take it on, marking the 9th time the two would work together on a film.

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Surprisingly, this is the first time Scorsese directed Al Pacino. And it wasn't easy to pull Pesci out of retirement.

"He didn't want to rehearse," Scorsese, 77, told Travers. "So I had to tell him, could you at least read it? Read the scene. He was just getting very slowly back into it, is what it was, very very carefully He had to be very precise because he didn't want to repeat himself. And that was the key. There can't be 'Casino' again. So the whole thing became where I had to prepare him and make him feel comfortable."

Watch the full interview with Peter Travers and Martin Scorsese in the video above.