pet project for nine years, but it proved difficult to produce in a pre-9/11 world and had to compete with his busy schedule as an actor. The actor said in an interview, "I had always been interested in the Cold War. I was raised in the Cold War. All of the intelligence stuff was interesting to me". De Niro and Roth ended up making a deal: Roth would turn De Niro's idea into a screenplay if the actor would direct Roth's existing script. If The Good Shepherd proved to be a commercial success then their follow-up would be De Niro's pitch. De Niro took the project to Universal Pictures where Producer, Graham King, agreed to help finance the $110 million budget. Initially they had a deal with Leonardo DiCaprio, who was interested in playing the film's protagonist, Edward Wilson. De Niro planned to being production in early 2005, but DiCaprio had to back out due to his scheduling conflict filming The Departed for Martin Scorsese. At this point, King left the project, as did his backers. De Niro approached Matt Damon, who was also doing The Departed but would be done earlier than DiCaprio and De Niro would only have to wait six months to do the film with him. Initially, Damon had to turn down De Niro's offer because he was scheduled to shoot Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!, but was able to sign on to star as Edward Wilson after Soderbergh agreed to delay filming. James Robinson's Morgan Creek Productions agreed to help finance the film with a budget under $90 million, which meant that many of the principal actors, Damon included, would have to waive their usual salaries to keep costs down. De Niro was not interested in making a spy movie featuring excessive amounts of violence and exciting car chases. "I just like it when things happen for a reason. So I want to downplay the violence, depict it in a muted way. In those days, it was a gentleman's game". He and Roth were also interested in showing how absolute power corrupted the leaders of the CIA. Early on during production, De Niro said in an interview, "they tried to do what they thought was right. And then, as they went on, they became overconfident and started doing things that are not always in our best interests". In preparation for the film, De Niro watched spy