After breaking out on Girls, Adam Driver's has been rapidly heating up.  The young actor has been rumored for roles in Batman vs. Superman and the Star Wars sequels, and most audiences haven't even seen how good he is in Michael Dowse's comedy The F Word (my review from TIFF).  Now, according to Showbiz411, Driver has netted a lead role in Martin Scorsese's next film, Silence.  Scorsese's adaptation of Shusaku Endo's historical novel has been on the director's back-burner for years, and last year we reported that Andrew Garfield and Ken Watanabe had been cast.  The story centers on two 17th-century Jesuit priests who travel to Japan to investigate claims of religious persecution.  Garfield is playing one of the priests, and presumably Driver is playing the other one since most of the cast will be Japanese.  Watanabe is playing their translator.

Hit the jump for the synopsis of Endo's book.  According to Showbiz 411, Silence will start shooting next summer.

Here's the synopsis for Shusaku Endo's Silence:

Silence is a novel of historical fiction by Japanese author Shusaku Endo. It is the story of a Jesuit missionary sent to seventeenth century Japan, who endured persecution in the time of Kakure Kirishitan ("Hidden Christians") that followed the defeat of the Shimabara Rebellion.

Written mostly in the form of a letter by its central character, the theme of a silent God who accompanies a believer in adversity was greatly influenced by the Catholic Endo's experience of religious discrimination in Japan, racism in France and debilitating tuberculosis.

The recipient of the 1966 Tanizaki Prize, Silence has been called "Endo’s supreme achievement" and "one of the twentieth century’s finest novels".

"Silence I regard as a masterpiece, a lucid and elegant drama". Irving Howe. -- The New York Review of Books

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