Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese have been down this road before, but never has it led to such riches. The pair's fourth big-screen collaboration, and picked up $40.2 million at the box office. That total is about $13 million more than the pair's previous high mark of $26.9 million, which "The Departed" took in during its opening weekend in 2006, and it's a clear indication that the duo is doing their most audience-pleasing work to date.
What's the secret to their cinematic special sauce? "There's very little bullsh--," "Shutter" co-star Emily Mortimer told MTV News. "And despite the fact that they're the most celebrated movie star and director in the world, they're very down-to-earth and very present."
The unpretentious vibe extended to welcoming those actors who had never been part of a DiCaprio-Scorsese production. "They let me in pretty quickly," said Mark Ruffalo. "We ate some cannoli. We had some mostacholi, some ravioli. I told them my last name ended with an 'o,' and then we were all very copacetic."
Once the cameras started rolling, DiCaprio and the cast found Scorsese aggressively pushing them to create the hallucinatory set pieces that capture the frightening spirit of the mental hospital that serves as the story's setting. "We kept pushing the intensity of each one of these sequences further and further and it wore on all of us," said DiCaprio. "We had to go to some pretty crazy places."
But when the director yelled "Cut!" the cast once again found itself in tranquil environs. "He's a delightful man to work with," Sir Ben Kingsley said of DiCaprio. "He's very charming and he's very intelligent."
"They're both so passionate," added Patricia Clarkson. "What you see with [Scorsese] is what you get, and that's the beauty of him. He's so passionate. It's infectious."
Check out everything we've got on "Shutter Island."
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