Academy Award winner Christian Bale (The Fighter, The Dark Knight trilogy, Vice) is set to star in the feature adaptation The Pale Blue Eye, reuniting with director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Black Mass, Antlers) on the pair’s third movie together, according to Deadline. They previously worked together on 2013’s crime drama Out of the Furnace and 217’s western drama Hostiles.
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Based on the novel by Louis Bayard and adapted by Cooper, the thriller revolves around the attempt to solve a series of murders that took place in 1830 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Bale will play a veteran detective in the film who investigates the murders, assisted by a detail-oriented young cadet who will later become a world-famous author, Edgar Allan Poe.
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“Even though Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston and died, delirious, in Baltimore, the majority of his life was spent in Virginia, my home state,” Cooper said. “So I grew up with his presence. He bequeathed us the detective genre, and he’s still such a presence in our culture, with every horror, mystery, and science fiction writer indebted to Poe. This is my attempt at a large-canvas whodunit, with a serial killer at its center. I want to make films that push me into a different, maybe uncomfortable space, but I am glad to have Christian go there with me. I’ve wanted to make this for over a decade and fortunately for me, Christian has perfectly aged into the lead character. He was far too young when I first thought of making this. Films are meant to happen at the right time. Christian is always in high demand, but to be able to make this with him will be such a joy for me.”
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Cross Creek (The Trial of the Chicago 7) will finance and produce. Bale and Cooper will both produce along with John Lesher and Cross Creek’s Tyler Thompson. Filming is expected to begin in the fall.
(Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
