Martin Scorsese is putting the finishing touches on “Shutter Island”with Leonard DiCaprio, has a George Harrison documentary on his plate, ditched a Bob Marley one and allegedly had a Sinatra project on the go, and yet still has time for more.
According to Production Weekly, his next film, “Silence” that may star Daniel Day-Lewis, Benicio Del Toro and Gael Garcia Bernal , is apparently scheduled to begin principal photography in April.
Adapted by Jay Cocks from a 1966 Shusako Endo novel, Day-Lewis and Del Toro would star as two Jesuit priests in the 17th century subjected to violence and persecution when they travel to Japan to find their mentor and spread the word of Christianity. Not an easy sell, but it is Scorsese. Or as Jeffrey Wells puts it, it’s “going to be a grim slide, Catholic guilt suffer-fest in Jesuit robes.”
Smells like Oscar-bait that audiences will begrudgingly go see. We’ll admit it’s only the cast and Scorsese that interest us and the subject not so much. Scorsese also has a crime mob drama with DeNiro in development called, “I Heard You Paint Houses“ (mob slang for contract killings). It appears the film will shoot in Japan or New Zealand. Once the trades get wind of this, they will surely move in for the kill and finish the story off with official studio confirmation.
