Irish Eye on Hollywood:
Liam The Monster

Liam Neeson and Ciaran Hinds have wrapped up their latest prestige project – Martin Scorsese’s new movie. The film’s producer recently said Scorsese is now editing the movie Silence, which is about the persecution of two Jesuit priests in 17th Century Japan. (In other words, it’s a far cry from being yet another movie in which Liam Neeson cracks skulls to save someone with his “particular set of skills.”) Scorsese and movie executives are hoping to get Silence ready for a premiere around the Spring of 2016. “The hope is for the film to premiere at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival,” the film’s producer, Gaston Pavlovich, said recently, of the French movie fest that is traditionally held in May. Pavlovich did add that the editing schedule may change. Either way, it’s a good bet Silence will be in theaters some time next year. Scorsese and Neeson are re-teaming for the first time since the Irish American immigrant epic Gangs of New York.
Neeson, as always, remains busy. He will play the titular monster in the late 2016 fantasy movie A Monster Calls. The film revolves around a troubled boy whose mother is sick and who is bullied at school. So, the boy escapes into a fantastical world of his own creation. The film is based on a book by Patrick Ness and Siobhan Dowd, an English-born activist whose parents were born in Ireland and who herself succumbed to a fatal illness in 2007. Next year, Neeson will also have an outsized role in the Korean War pic Operation Chromite. Neeson will play American general Douglas MacArthur. ♦