Martin Scorsese’s ‘Silence’ Reportedly Eyeing November Awards Season Release

In a bit of news that will shock absolutely no one, Paramount is reportedly eyeing an awards season release date for Martin Scorsese’s new film. Though we’ve yet to see a trailer — or even an official plot synopsis — for the director’s long-developing passion project, we do know that it’s definitely hitting theaters sometime this year. And now we might have a better idea of when.

Screen Daily reports that Paramount is eyeing a November release for Silence, though a specific date is unknown as the studio has yet to make a formal announcement. It’s also unclear if Paramount is planning a wide release or a staggered rollout — Silence doesn’t exactly have the same mainstream appeal as The Wolf of Wall Street, for instance, which had a dark comedic / satirical streak and had a more general audience-friendly cast including Leonardo DiCaprio and Matthew McConaughey.

What Silence does have is Adam Driver, whose role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens has made him a major star. Driver co-stars with Andrew Garfield as two jesuit priests who head to Japan to search for their missing mentor, played by Liam Neeson. Set in the 17th century, the film is based on the Shusaku Endo novel, which is described as follows:

Seventeenth-century Japan: Two Portuguese Jesuit priests travel to a country hostile to their religion, where feudal lords force the faithful to publicly renounce their beliefs. Eventually captured and forced to watch their Japanese Christian brothers lay down their lives for their faith, the priests bear witness to unimaginable cruelties that test their own beliefs. Shusaku Endois one of the most celebrated and well-known Japanese fiction writers of the twentieth century, and Silence is widely considered to be his great masterpiece.

We’ve already seen a couple of photos from the film, but with an awards season release in mind, we likely won’t see the first trailer until sometime this summer. Silence also stars Ciaran Hinds and Tadanobu Asano.