“Silence,” the Martin Scorsese-directed film based on the 1966 Shusaku Endo novel of the same name, will get a limited run starting Dec. 23 and a wide release in January.
The movie, the director’s first since 2013’s “Wolf of Wall Street,” is one of Scorsese’s passion projects, having been in development for more than a decade. It has been pushed back repeatedly over the years, but finally began production in 2014 with a budget of $50 million.
The three-hour-long drama tells the the story of Portuguese Jesuits who go to Japan to find their missing mentor. During their travels, they endure harsh persecution from locals who don’t take well to their Christian mission.
The film stars Andrew Garfield, Liam Neeson, Adam Driver and Ciaran Hinds as four missionaries, as well as an ensemble cast of Japanese actors that includes Tadanobu Asano, Issey Ogata, Yosuke Kubozuka and Yoshi Oida.
The screenplay was penned by Jay Cocks, who worked with Scorsese in “Gangs of New York,” and Dale A. Brown and George Furla are executive producing. Gaston Pavlovich of Fabrica de Cine also worked closely with Scorsese for the project.
