Oscar-winners Daniel Day-Lewis and Benicio Del Toro are lined up to play a couple of 17th century Jesuit priests in director Martin Scorsese's next big budget film, "Silence."
T.i. is a work that involves all the things that have intrigued Scorsese all his life - violence, Catholicism, and historical filmmaking. With the addition of the choosy Day-Lewis, who only made five films during the 90s, this already looks to be a lock on a Best Picture nomination for 2011.
Gael Garcia Bernal (Y Tu Mama Tambien, The Motorcycle Diaries) is rumored to be in talks for the movie as well.
The screenplay by Jay Cocks has been adapted from the 1966 masterpiece novel "Silence" by Shusaku Endo, which is considered by many to be one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.
In the novel, the story follows two Jesuit priests, Sebastião Rodrigues and Francis Garrpe, who travel to Japan during the Shogunate dynasty to observe the progress of an evangelical mission taking place there and to locate their missing master. They discover that the government, which is trying to rid the country of western influence and particularly Christianity, forces Christians to commit apostasy which causes them to worship in secret.
Filming on "Silence" is scheduled to start later this year in New Zealand.
