Scorsese’s ‘Silence’ Picked up by Paramount for November ’15 Release
Martin Scorsese is currently in pre-production one of his dream projects, an adaptation of Japanese writer Shusaku Endo’s Silence, and the film has finally landed a distributor with Paramount pictures.
The studio aims for the film to be released in November of 2015 so as to capitalize on awards season buzz. Paramount has had success with Scorsese’s last three films - Shutter Island, Hugo, and The Wolf of Wall Street – and has had awards success with two of them made money on all them, particularly ‘Island‘ and ‘Wolf‘ which are the director’s highest grossing movies.
Scorsese has a script written with Gangs of New York writer Jay Cocks, and the top shelf cast includes Liam Neeson, Andrew Garfield, Ken Watanabe and Adam Driver. Filming is due to commence this year in Taiwan on a budget of 30 million with independent financing. Previously the likes of Daniel Day-Lewis and Benicio del Toro were attached at different times of development.
Silence is one of the director’s personal projects – others like it in his career have been The Last Temptation of Christ and ‘Gangs’ – and like those films have taken years to gestate and gain financing (there was even controversy in the past over how long it was talking Scorsese to make Silence). According to Deadline, the film will finally be made thanks to Emmett/Furla/Oasis Films principals Randall Emmett and George Furla committed the production financing, with Corsan Entertainment co-financing.
The film tells the story of Jesuit priests who come to Japan in the 17th century and face persecution and violence amid their attempts to spread Christianity. For Scorsese, who marks the likes of Robert Rossellini (i.e. The Flowers of St. Francis) and Pasolini films (The Gospel According to St. Matthew) as among his inspirations and has made films in the past like ‘Last Temptation’ and the Dali Lama pic Kundun, this looks to be a serious look at faith and how it relates still today to the modern age (according to IMDb the film also has some lineage to another of Scorsese’s heroes, Federico Fellini and his film La Strada).
Personally, I look forward to this just as much if not more than Star Wars come late next year.
