Scenes of Al Pacino and Robert de Niro in The Irishman will be de-aged

It is Martin Scorsese’s long-delayed passion project, a mobster film with a twist.

The Irishman stars the Hollywood veterans Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci as cinema-goers have never seen them before, as digitally “de-aged” versions of themselves.

The technology aims to make the actors resemble their younger selves, as in The Godfather Part II STEVE SCHAPIRO/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES

Production of the Netflix film has run over schedule and now Scorsese has revealed why: he is struggling to retain the intensity in his actors’ eyes after they have been stripped of their wrinkles by CGI.

The director let slip his problems with the pioneering “youthification” technology in an appearance on the A24 film podcast.

The first half of The Irishman, about Frank Sheeran, the American union leader and mafia assassin, will feature digitally de-aged actors. In the second half De Niro, 75, who