Before Oscar bound
Christian Bale tackles the cape and cowl of The Caped Crusader for the third and final time in
The Dark Knight Rises late Spring/early Summer, the Welsh born actor will sneak another project in as his next feature. Well, 'sneak in' probably is the wrong term as that would indicate a small movie and this certainly won't be that. In fact, this will likely be the most expensive film made this year or any year. Well in it's native China at least, where it's one of their most expensive films of all time...
THR are reporting that Bale will lead the 600 million yuan ($90 million) budgeted
Nanjing Heroes, an epic spectacle from director
Zhang Yimou (Hero) that focuses on the Najing Massacre of 1937 when thousands of people were murdered by invading Japanese troops in what was then the capital of China. Shooting begins January 10th and will be filmed 60% in Mandarin Chinese and 40% in the English-language. Bale will play an American Priest who helps a great number of Chinese citizens escape certain death. From the sounds of things, he is a fictional character, probably based on German businessman
John Rabe, who saved at least 20,000 Chinese citizens during the mauling. The film was announced today at a press conference by Yimou, China's version of Steven Spielberg, easily their most famous filmmaker. Yimou said; I met Christian in America and was impressed with his serious book research for the role. For anyone who has followed the method actor's career, this should come as not the least bit surprising as Bale puts in more prep work than any one of his peers and is happy to push the limits of his mental and physical state for the good of a movie. Whether that be by losing a dangerous amounts of weight for
The Machinist or
The Fighter, putting on pounds of muscle for
Batman Begins and
The Dark Knight, or even going so far as adopting the accent of the character whose film he is promoting during interviews.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K8tdscah5c Yimou will hire American visual effects company Dark Side FX, whose previous work includes The Dark Knight, The Pacific and Saving Private Ryan. No word of a U.S. distributor yet but it should happen given Bale's appearance. Meanwhile, Yimou's next movie
The Love of the Hawthorn Tree, plays out of competition at the Berlin film festival in February.