Great news for those of you who have been following Martin Scorsese’s long-developed passion project SILENCE, we have even more confirmation that it is actually happening. He’s been working on the adaptation of the Shusaku Endo novel for over twenty years and things are finally firming up with a great cast and now a release date. The film will start production this year with Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Ken Watanabe, and Liam Neeson set to star, and now Paramount has picked up the movie for a planned November 2015 release. That of course puts the film in prime awards season!
Here’s the description of Silence:
Young Portuguese Jesuit Sebastião Rodrigues is sent to Japan to succor the local Church and investigate reports that his mentor, Fr. Cristóvão Ferreira, has committed apostasy. (Ferreira is a historical figure, who apostatized after torture and later married a Japanese woman and wrote a treatise against Christianity.) Fr. Rodrigues and his companion Fr. Francisco Garrpe arrive in Japan in 1638. There they find the local Christian population driven underground. Security officials force suspected Christians to trample on fumie, which are crudely carved images of Christ. Those who refuse are imprisoned and killed. The novel relates the trials of the Christians and increasing hardship suffered by Rodrigues, as more is learnt about the circumstances of Ferreira’s apostasy.
Jay Cocks (GANGS OF NEW YORK) adapted the work which is now firmly on top of my must-see list. I’ve been waiting years for this project to finally get moving; it has all the making of another Scorsese classic. That 2016 Oscar season is already lighting up with Alejandro Iñárritu’s THE REVENANT starring Tom Hardy and Leonardo DiCaprio. The movie will see a Christmas Day 2015 release and THR reports that Iñárritu intends to film THE REVENANT in sequence, a rare and expensive move. Iñárritu used the same technique on BIRDMAN, as the entire film is shot to look like it’s composed of one long, unbroken take. It hasn’t been confirmed yet if he will get the green light to shoot THE REVENANT this way but we will keep you posted on this project for sure.
DiCaprio and Hardy are set to lead the story of an 1820s frontiersman who is mauled by a bear during a fur trapping expedition, robbed, and left for dead, only to recover and set out to exact revenge on those who betrayed him. The film will go up against MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 5 and director David O. Russell’s next film JOY.
Alejandro Iñárritu’s BIRDMAN soars into theaters October 17, 2014.