In a record-shattering deal at the European Film Market, Netflix has forked out a reported $55 million to pre-buy worldwide rights to the Christian Bale-led gothic horror-thriller “The Pale Blue Eye”.
The project marks a re-teaming of Bale and his “Out of the Furnace” and “Hostiles” director Scott Cooper and is an adaptation of the Louis Bayard novel of the same name.
The “large-canvas whodunit” 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 plays the investigating veteran detective and is aided by a detail-oriented young cadet named Edgar Allan Poe (who went in to basically invent the detective fiction genre and was a major influence on sci-fi and horror).
Cooper scripts the adaptation while Bale will produce with Cooper, John Lesher and Tyler Thompson for Cross Creek Pictures. Shooting begins this Fall once Bale has finished both the untitled David O. Russell film and his villain role in Marvel Studios’ “Thor: Love And Thunder”.
This marks Netflix’s third big acquisition at EFM following deals for the Colin Firth-led “Operation Mincemeat” and the Liam Neeson-led “The Ice Road”.
Source: The Wrap