Scorsese talking to actors for Silence.

Looks like Martin Scorsese really is going to make that adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s Silence that he’s been talking about for years.

A few days ago, it was reported that he was thinking of shooting the film in New Zealand (and not, alas, Vancouver).

And now, tonight, Variety reports that he is actively talking to Daniel Day-Lewis, Benicio Del Toro and possibly Gael Garcia Bernal about starring in the film, which concerns the persecution of Jesuit missionaries in 17th-century Japan.

Day-Lewis previously worked with Scorsese on The Age of Innocence (1993) and Gangs of New York (2002).

So far, no one has mentioned Leonardo DiCaprio’s name in connection with this movie. If he remains uninvolved, then this would be Scorsese’s first feature-length non-documentary to not star DiCaprio since Bringing Out the Dead (1999).