Christian Bale is set to star in the next Netflix book-to-movie adaptation, The Pale Blue Eye, a gothic thriller to kick off 2023.
The upcoming American Gothic horror crime film is heading to the streaming site on January 6, 2023, and follows the story of veteran detective Augustus Landor as he investigates a series of murders, with the help of a young Edgar Allan Poe.
Netflix’s The Pale Blue Eye
The Pale Blue Eye is a project the film’s director, Scott Cooper, has wanted to helm for more than a decade and now it’s coming to like as a Gothic thriller that revolves around a series of fictional murders that took place in 1830 at the United States Military Academy, West Point, and surrounds a young cadet the world would come to know as Edgar Allan Poe, played by Harry Melling.
Christian Bale portrays retired detective Augustus Landor, tasked with investigating the murders. Edgar Allan Poe is played by Harry Melling, but these two are just the tip of a hugely talented large cast.
Gillian Anderson, Lucy Boynton, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Toby Jones, Harry Lawtey, Simon McBurney, Timothy Spall, Hadley Robinson, Joey Brooks, Brennan Keel Cook, Gideon Glick, Fred Hechinger, Matt Heim, Steven Maier, Charlie Tahan and Robert Duvall are all also playing various roles in the movie.
Bale is producing alongside director/writer Scott Cooper, John Lesher, and Tyler Thompson of Cross Creek Pictures.
The Pale Blue Eye
The movie is an adaptation of the 2006 novel of the same name by Louis Bayard. The Pale Blue Eye book was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Novel, in 2007, and a CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award.
In the book, Poe becomes the sidekick of a retired, widowed New York City police constable named Gus Landor, hired by the academy to investigate the death of a cadet who was found hanged.
It seems that someone then made off with the cadet’s body, and by the time it was recovered his heart had been carved out of his chest.
It’s unknown if the movie will stick to the book’s narrative exactly, but we’re excited to find out.