Martin Scorsese to Produce Docudrama Series THE SAINTS
By Movieguide® Contributor
Filmmaker Martin Scorsese will produce a new docudrama series that looks at the lives of eight saints.
MARTIN SCORSESE PRESENTS: THE SAINTS will premiere on Fox Nation in November.
“The series will premiere in two parts, with the first four episodes to air on Sunday, November 16, and the final set to air in May 2025. Each episode focuses on a singular Saint, including Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, John the Baptist, Thomas Becket, Mary Magdalene, Moses the Black, Sebastian, and Maximillian Kolbe, examining these figures and their acts of kindness, selflessness, and sacrifice,” Deadline reported.
Scorsese will host, produce, narrate and be an executive producer for the series.
This isn’t the moviemaker’s first faith-focused project. He directed the Teddy Bear Award®-nominated movie SILENCE, which follows two Catholic priests in Japan. Part of Movieguide®’s review reads:
SILENCE is an historical drama from Martin Scorsese set in 17th Century Japan. Two young Catholic priests, Father Sebastian and Father Francisco, secretly travel to Japan, where Christians are undergoing intense, brutal persecution by the shogun running the country from what is now Tokyo. Reports have reached overseas that the leading Catholic priest in Japan, Father Ferreira has renounced his father. Eventually, Sebastian is captured and jailed. The shogun’s inquisitor tortures Japanese Christians to get Sebastian to renounce his own faith.
Though sometimes slow, SILENCE is superbly filmed and acted. Director Martin Scorsese directs one of his best movies. Andrew Garfield, who also stars in Mel Gibson’s wonderful Christian movie, HACKSAW RIDGE, once again gives an excellent performance; so do the other English language and Japanese actors. Best of all, SILENCE is nothing like Scorsese’s blasphemous TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. Christian faith is often respected. In fact, despite the apostasy and doubt that occurs, the ending actually confirms faith in Jesus Christ’s work on the Cross. SILENCE does contain scenes of extreme, disturbing violence and some complex theology. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution.
Scorsese is currently working on a film about Jesus.
Last year, he met with Pope Francis and “responded to the Pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus.” The screenplay will be based on Japanese writer Shusaku Endo’s “A Life of Jesus.”
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Scorsese explained the reasoning behind this new endeavor.
“I tried finding with KUNDUN and THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, even GANGS OF NEW YORK, to a certain extent, ways into redemption and the human condition and how we deal with the negative things inside us,” he said. “Are we decent and then learn to become indecent? Can we change? Will others accept that change? And it really is, I think, a fear of a society and culture that’s corrupted because of its lack of grounding in morality and spirituality. Not religion. Spirituality. Denying that.”
“So for me, it’s finding my own way in a … if you want to say the term ‘religious’ sense, but I hate to use that language, because it’s misinterpreted often,” he added. “But there’s basic fundamental beliefs that I have — or I’m trying to have — and I’m using these films to find it.”
Through this project, Scorsese hopes to change the way people view religion.
“I’m trying to find a new way to make it more accessible and take away the negative onus of what has been associated with organized religion,” he said.
“Right now, ‘religion,’ you say that word and everyone is up in arms because it’s failed in so many ways,” he explained. “But that doesn’t mean necessarily that the initial impulse was wrong. Let’s get back. Let’s just think about it. You may reject it. But it might make a difference in how you live your life — even in rejecting it. Don’t dismiss it offhand. That’s all I’m talking about. And I’m saying that as a person who’s going to be 81 in a couple of days. You know what I’m saying?”