Watch the trailer for Martin Scorsese's epic 'Silence'

It’s the movie that Martin Scorsese wanted to make for 28 years. And now the trailer for it has landed: you can allow yourself to get very excited.

Silence is the legendary filmmaker’s first movie since the brilliant Wolf of Wall Street back in 2013 and features a trip back to the 17^th Century for the story of two Portuguese Christian missionaries (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) who travel to Japan in search of their missing mentor (Liam Neeson); a quest made all the more dangerous and treacherous due to the illegality of Christianity in the country at the time.

The story is based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Shūsaku Endō and the film has been in development since 1990, with Scorsese telling Deadline in 2013,  "My initial interests in life were very strongly formed by what I took seriously at that time, and 45-50 years ago I was steeped in the Roman Catholic religion. As you get older, ideas go and come. Questions, answers, loss of the answer again and more questions, and this is what really interests me.

“Yes, the cinema and the people in my life and my family are most important, but ultimately as you get older, there's got to be more. Much, much more. The very nature of secularism right now is really fascinating to me, but at the same time do you wipe away what could be more enriching in your life, which is an appreciation or some sort of search for that which is spiritual and transcends? That's one of the reasons why I made the George Harrison documentary. Silence is just something that I'm drawn to in that way. It's been an obsession, it has to be done... it's a strong, wonderful true story, a thriller in a way, but it deals with those questions."

Silence will be released in the US on 23 December and in the UK on 1 January, setting it up as a likely Oscars contender. Roll on next month.