According to Deadline, Paramount is in talks to release Martin Scorsese's next film, and are looking to do so around the end of 2015 – traditionally a sweet spot for film releases ahead of the awards season.

The film, Silence, is adapted from the 1966 Shusako Endo novel of the same name, and concerns a pair of priests who become persecuted after trying to bring Christianity to Japan in the 17th century. Scorsese has assembled a heavyweight cast, with Liam Neeson and Ken Watanabe alongside Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver, and has screenwriter Jay Cocks penning the script, who also penned Scorsese's Gangs of New York and The Age of Innocence. Production is to start later in the year, in Taiwan – a location appararently recommended by fellow director Ang Lee.

"The subject matter is very close to my heart," Scorsese told Total Film earlier this year. "I've been working on it since I first read the book in 1989... "It goes back to growing up in New York, living in an area that was pretty tough, and also the church at the same time. It's similar to Mean Streets, in a way. It deals with spiritual matters in a concrete, physical world; a world where invariably the worst of human nature is revealed."

If Paramount succeed in baiting the Oscars, it follows their campaign for Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, which received five nominations. Off the back of a wildly entertaining tale of financial, sexual and chemical excess, it became the director's highest grossing film to date. He is also currently working on a documentary about Bill Clinton for US TV network HBO, and recently completed another documentary, on the New York Review of Books.