Martin Scorsese admits it's 'too late' for him to tell the stories he wants as 'there's no more time'

Legendary film director Martin Scorsese has admitted that it's 'too late' to tell all of the stories he'd like to as 'there's no more time'.

While he's got an incredible body of work which have been beloved by critics and audiences alike, not to mention the mountain of awards they've won, the famous director has said there's still more he wants to do, but he won't have time to do it all.

Scorsese was speaking to Deadline about his upcoming movie Killers of the Flower Moon, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons and Brendan Fraser.

The film depicts an FBI investigation into a series of murders of members of the Osage tribe in 1920s Oklahoma and is based on a true story.

After discussing what he wanted to do with the movie and what it was like working with actors like DiCaprio and DeNiro so many times, talk turned towards what the future holds for Scorsese.

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The director was asked whether at the age of 80 he still had 'that fire to get right back behind the camera and get the next one going', and he said that he did.

"I wish I could take a break for eight weeks and make a film at the same time. The whole world has opened up to me, but it’s too late. It’s too late," Scorsese said.

"I’m old. I read stuff. I see things. I want to tell stories, and there’s no more time.

"Kurosawa, when he got his Oscar, when George [Lucas] and Steven [Spielberg] gave it to him, he said, 'I’m only now beginning to see the possibility of what cinema could be, and it’s too late'."

"He was 83. At the time, I said, 'What does he mean?' Now I know what he means."

Scorsese will turn 81 in November of this year and while he still has plenty of ideas for other movies, the inevitability of time and age means that at some point he will have to stop directing and there will still be plenty of projects which never get made.

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Like others who have been as prolific as him in the movie industry, the legendary director has a long list of projects he was attached to that never got off the ground.

Back in the 1960s, he had the idea to do a movie about Jesus Christ set in the Lower East Side of New York City, while there are also a string of stories about historical figures and biopics which never ended up getting made.

Some projects were cancelled before they ever really got going, others became mired in development hell where something threw a wrench in production and things just never got moving again.

For all of the known projects he was attached to which never got made, there must surely be many more ideas in his head, some of which will sadly never be realised.