Deadline.
Bale will produce the film along with Birdman‘s John Lesher and Tyler Thompson of Cross Creek Pictures, who is coming off the Golden Globe-winning The Trial Of The Chicago 7.
Netflix is ramping up its feature film productions and isn’t afraid to spend big money on new films. Thus we have The Pale Blue Eye, a Gothic horror-thriller starring Oscar-winner Christian Bale and acquired by Netflix for a whopping $55M, beating many other competitors who were seeking to buy the film at the European Film Market.
Netflix’s The Pale Blue Eye will be written and directed by Scott Cooper who is known for such films as Crazy Heart, Black Mass, Hostiles and Out of the Furnace. He and Bale had previously worked together on the latter two films making The Pale Blue Eye their third collaboration. Cooper has been seeking to put this film into development for over a decade, according to What is the plot of The Pale Blue Eye?
Netflix’s The Pale Blue Eye is an adaptation of Louis Bayard’s 2006 novel of the same name. Fun fact: the novel, which features a young Edgar Allan Poe, was nominated for an Edgar Award in the category Best Novel in 2007. The Edgar Award is of course named after Edgar Allan Poe. The quick premise of Netflix’s The Pale Blue Eye is the following:At West Point Academy in 1830, the calm of an October evening is shattered by the discovery of a young cadet’s body swinging from a rope just off the parade grounds. An apparent suicide is not unheard of in a harsh regimen like West Point’s, but the next morning, an even greater horror comes to light. Someone has stolen into the room where the body lay and removed the heart. At a loss for answers and desperate to avoid any negative publicity, the Academy calls on the services of a local civilian, Augustus Landor, a former police detective who acquired some renown during his years in New York City before retiring to the Hudson Highlands for his health. Now a widower, and restless in his seclusion, Landor agrees to take on the case. As he questions the dead man’s acquaintances, he finds an eager assistant in a moody, intriguing young cadet with a penchant for drink, two volumes of poetry to his name, and a murky past that changes from telling to telling. The cadet’s name? Edgar Allan Poe.