As with any movie directed by acclaimed filmmaker Martin Scorsese, there’s been a lot of buzz surrounding Silence, his adaptation of the 1966 novel of the same name by Shūsaku Endō. The first trailer for the film was released this week by Paramount Pictures, and it certainly promises to be a tense experience for both its characters and the audience.
The film casts The Amazing Spider-Man and Hacksaw Ridge actor Andrew Garfield and Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Girls actor Adam Driver as a pair of young Portuguese Jesuit priests in the 17th century who travel to Japan to locate their fellow priest and mentor and continue his work spreading Christianity in the foreign land.
Along with Garfield and Driver, the film also stars Liam Neeson (Taken) as the young priests’ mentor and the subject of their quest. The cast also includes Tadanobu Asano (Thor), Issey Ogata (The Sun), Ciaran Hinds (Bleed For This), Yosuke Kubozuka (Go), and Yoshi Oida (The Pillow Book).
The film is directed by Scorsese from a script penned by himself and Jay Cocks, who also co-wrote the screenplay for Gangs of New York with Scorsese. It will be the second adaptation of the novel after Masahiro Shinoda brought it to the big screen in 1971 as a film of the same name.
Silence has been a passion project for Scorsese since the ’90s, but the director was forced to back-burner the film after he was unable to secure financing for it as the follow-up to his 2004 film The Aviator. When the movie was first announced, Gael García Bernal, Benicio Del Toro, and Daniel Day-Lewis were cast as the young priests and their mentor, respectively, but all three actors were forced to depart the project as it stalled out in development. Garfield, Driver, and Neeson later replaced them.
A joint production of Paramount Pictures, Fabrica de Cine, and Ai Films, Silence will have a limited theatrical release on December 23, followed by a wide release in January 2017.
