While he is set to take home the Best Supporting Actor Oscar this year for The Fighter, Christian Bale is keeping busy. Currently filming Yimou Zhang‘s The 13 Women of Nanjing, he will jump right on to Christoper Nolan‘s The Dark Knight Rises, and then possibly The Dark Tower. When he has some time in his schedule, it was revealed today he may re-team with the writer & director that gave him one of his most memorable roles.
We Got This Covered spoke with Brad Anderson for Vanishing on 7th Street, and the director unveiled an upcoming project that could turn into a Machinist reunion. For that 2004 psychological thriller, Bale lost 62 pounds by only consuming one cup of coffee, an apple, and a can of tuna each day. This new project is an adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s novel Concrete Island and would see the return of Scott Kosar for script duties, along with Bale attached to star. Check out a synopsis below.
A twisted adaptation of Robinson Crusoe, the story’s protagonist, Robert Maitland, a wealthy architect, finds himself stranded in a manmade ‘island’ (a section of fenced-off wasteland in the middle of a motorway intersection) between the Westway and M4 Motorway in West London, forced to survive on only what is in his crashed Jaguar and what he is able to find. As his condition degrades, it soon becomes difficult to determine whether Maitland is finding sanity or watching his mind fall apart as he finds companions on the island and eventually decides to remain there and forsake his former life.
Some of those weight loss techniques sound like they could be repeated again for Bale. As for Anderson’s other projects, he spoke with STYD to give an update on his suspense thriller Jack with Samuel L. Jackson and Liev Schreiber attached:
“It’s about a serial killer who is in a car accident in the beginning of the movie and has retrograde amnesia. His physical therapist tries to get him back on his feet, and they fall in love, and then of course, midway through the movie he has flashes of who he really is, and he’s a killer,” he elaborated. “So it’s actually very cool, it’s got a real nice Hitchcock suspense aspect to it. It takes all the conventions of the genre, but it’s a very well-written script and we’re trying to get that one going.”
He also talked about an historical drama he is currently writing. The film is “set in the 18th Century [and is] about the first woman to navigate down the Amazon River in Brazil, kind of an adventure story really.”
Vanishing on 7th Street has been on VOD for over a month and hits theaters February 18th. Watch my TIFF video review here, and our text review here.
What do you think about The Machinist reunion?