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His breakthrough film Mean Streets was a portrait of cocky Italian-Americans involved in organised crime. He went on to craft perhaps the most admired biopic ever made in Raging Bull and has since made acclaimed films about the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and the blues.

So it is hard to think of a director better qualified than Martin Scorsese to film the colourful life of a swaggering Italian-American with alleged Mob links who was also a giant of 20th-century popular music.

Yesterday the director confirmed for the first time to The Times that he has finally struck a deal to make a long-rumoured film about Frank Sinatra.

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Whoever is chosen to play Sinatra won’t get the job on the quality of his voice. It will be his box office pulling power

James Christopher

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With no date set for the start of production he refused to elaborate but added: “It’s been in the works for many years”.

According to reports in the film press the script is by Phil Alden Robinson who scored an Oscar nomination for Field of Dreams, a sentimental baseball drama starring Kevin Costner.

No firm casting decisions have been made yet for Sinatra although Scorsese’s current muse Leonardo Di Caprio and Johnny Depp have both been linked with the title role.

It is a plum part for whoever gets it: heroic triumphs, stirring comebacks, tempestuous romances, monstrous ambition, great clothes and plenty of wisecracks for comic relief. The challenge will be persuading audiences to accept them as one of the most celebrated, recognisable and controversial figures yet produced by American culture.

Whether they succeed or fail they will inevitably be seen to have done it their way.

One probably insurmountable hurdle has been cleared already: the actor won’t have to sing like Frank Sinatra. After two years of behind the scenes negotiations Peter Guber and Cathy Schulman, the producers from Universal Pictures and Mandalay Pictures have secured rights to use Sinatra’s original recordings in the film from Frank Sinatra Enterprises — a joint venture of the Sinatra Estate and Warner Music Group.

The Sinatra family is involved with the project through his youngest daughter, Tina, who is an executive producer.

Sources emphasised that this does not inevitably mean that the singer and actor’s less appealing character traits will be airbrushed out of the story: Tina Sinatra also worked on a five-hour television mini-series about her father in 1992 that won a Golden Globe and an Emmy. Made while its subject was still alive it depicted him as a neglectful father and cheating husband who hung out with the mafia, drank to excess, and, at one crisis point, attempted suicide.

Still, it will not be a hatchet job. According to Schulman "in any family, you're dealing with a precious life, and in this case, you're dealing with an extraordinary life.We knew Scorsese would lead the troops to a true, fair, exciting and entertaining portrait of the man.”

The director’s CV includes some biopics (notably Kundun, about the early life of the Dalai Lama) that paint their subject in a notably more colourful light than others (such as The Aviator, with di Caprio as a crazed Howard Hughes). Casino, while not a strict biopic, was criticised for mythologising the thuggish gambling boss whose life story it was based on.

Sinatra will be "an unconventional biopic," Schulman said.

"It's not a cradle-to-the-grave traditional portrait of the consecutive events in a man's life. Instead it's more of a collage and, in many ways, it will feel like an album itself. It's a collection of various moments and impressions in his life and together we hope they'll tell the full story and present full themes."

Sinatra, who died in 1998, performed on more than 1,400 musical recordings, was awarded 31 gold records and earned 10 Grammys. He also made 58 films and won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for From Here to Eternity.

At one time Scorsese was in talks to direct a biopic about Sinatra’s Rat Pack buddy Dean Martin but the project never came to fruition.

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