After more than 25 years of planning and one of the longest shoots in recent memory. Scorsese's Gangs of New York will be out in the UK on January 10th 2003.

In June '77 MARTIN SCORSESE, hot off Taxi Driver, took out a two page advert in Variety to announce his next project: Gangs of New York. As of summer 2002, one whole jubilee later, the master director's dream project is nearing completion. Scorsese was still a movie brat, all of 34 years old, when he began planning his 19th century epic, an adaptation of Herbert Asbury's 1927 book. The director is now nearly 60 and apparently rather humbled by the whole experience. "All I know is I did the best I could" he said recently.

Under any normal circumstances Marty's best would be better than pretty much everything else; but then, Gangs wasn't filmed in optimum conditions. During more than a year of shooting, rumours constantly leaked from the Rome set surrounding the daily rewrites, spiralling costs and endless delays. It would be hard to believe that the shoot entirely escaped clashes between the director and the man who stumped up most of the $97 million budget- Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein. However, from this year's Cannes launch onwards Marty and Harvey have been sweetness and light, with Weinstein joking to reporters: "After you have eaten in every restaurant in Rome three times over it's time to go home."

Whatever arguments did or did not take place, it is now certain that the movie some people thought would never see the light of day is locked (no word on the running time yet), and will be released on Christmas Day in the US, just in time for Oscar consideration. And given the cast Scorsese has put together, a clutch of nominations is surely guaranteed.

Scorsese lured Daniel Day Lewis back to acting for the first time since 1997's The Boxer (Day Lewis says he "does not know" if he will work again), and by all accounts, the 45 year old Irish actor has responded with his customary zeal. To tap into the rage of bloodthirsty political fixer Bill the Butcher, Day Lewis spent each morning listening to Eminem while working out. The ultimate method man also insisted everyone called him Bill. "I just met Daniel recently," co-star Cameron Diaz said almost a full year after Gangs wrapped.

As for Diaz herself, Marty has revealed that the unusual casting choice was influenced by the effect she had on his chosen lead actor. "When she came in, something happened. He kind of brightened up," Scorsese explains. "There was some sort of chemistry between the two of them, and I thought then that she could do it- the way she was affecting him."

That lead actor is of course Leonardo DiCaprio. DiCaprio signed on first and it was his interest, rather than Marty's, that guaranteed the green light. Due to a contractual quirk, DiCaprio has seen his salary shrink by millions as budget overruns made Miramax nervous; however the 28 year old actor has nothing but praise for the process. "This is the way movies should be made. It was almost like a theatre group- we were creating a lot of what we did as we went along."

DiCaprio of course has been through all this speculation before, and that movie about the boat did okay. Then again, Leo didn't have a dodgy `tache in Titanic. Indeed, if question marks do remain, they focus on the central Diaz- DiCaprio love story, rather than the epic battle scenes between rival gangs. So far Empire has seen 25 minutes, including some breathtaking tracking shots around the huge Cinecittą set, some highly theatrical set pieces and some great Day Lewis thesping. Overall, the movie seems more fun than you might expect.

If Gangs of New York does one-tenth Titanic's box office, Harvey will probably be satisfied. (One-tenth is about $180 million.) After all, Martin Scorsese's otherwise glittering career is not punctuated by any breakout hits. In the US, his biggest film was the 1991 remake of Cape Fear, and that grossed only $79 million. Gangs may turn out to be a huge hit, but if it does, it's not because Marty planned it. "I'm not that interested in the average film that comes out of Hollywood," he says, "What can I learn? How to make a Blockbuster?"

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