US film director Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese is planning a fresh chapter in his four-decade partnership with Robert De Niro with a new movie called "The Irishman", the veteran US director said Friday.

The pair have collaborated since the early 1970s on some of Hollywood's best-loved and most influential movies, including "Goodfellas" and "Raging Bull", which won De Niro his second best actor Oscar.

Speaking at the Lumiere film festival in the eastern French city of Lyon, 72-year-old Scorsese confirmed they were planning to team up again for their first feature-length film since gangster and gambling epic "Casino" in 1995.

"It's a film called 'The Irishman' -- we're still working on all the details," Scorsese said. "Bob and I are trying to work on our schedules and the finance."

But before starting work on the film he has two other projects in the works -- "Silence", a film about Christian missionaries in 17th-century Japan and "Vinyl", a series for HBO about the record industry in the 1970s.

Scorsese is set to co-produce the TV series with legendary Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger. The pair have been mulling the project since the late 1990s and had originally envisaged it as a movie.

The director, known for gritty crime movies liberally spiced with swearing and graphic violence but also original, imaginative cinematography, says he has no plans to stop work.

"I don't know, as many as I could make," he said when asked how many more movies he planned to make.
Source: AFP