MUMBAI: Viacom’s Paramount Pictures has inked a production deal with director Martin Scorsese.

Scorsese’s latest film The Departed starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg and Martin Sheen released recently and has fared well at the international box office.

Paramount chairman and CEO Brad Grey was one of the producers of The Departed, which was distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.

According to media reports, Paramount will give Scorsese $2.5 million a year in overhead for four years. This makes it a similar deal to that of Brad Pitt’s Plan B Prods. The only other director with a Paramount first-look deal is Cameron Crowe.

The report further added that Scorsese has agreed to give Paramount and its division Paramount Vantage a priority for all the projects he directs and produces in all media, including features, made-for-DVD films, documentaries, digital content and television. Paramount had recently agreed to release the untitled Rolling Stones documentary Scorsese is working on.

According to the terms of the deal, which is non-exclusive in nature, Paramount will retain the right to co-financing and co-distributing any film he sets up with another studio for the next four years.

Scorsese has to his credit movies like Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, New York, New York, The Last Waltz, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, Cape Fear, Casino, Gangs of New York and The Aviator.

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