Christian Bale To Take Vengeance On Viggo Mortensen in Out of the Furnace?

Christian Bale, who seems to be moving away from tentpole blockbusters for the time being with The Dark Knight Rises putting an end to the Batman film saga this summer, has signed on to take the leading role in Relativity Media's thriller "Out of the Furnace". Filming will begin before the summer and before Bale makes "King of Cups" for Terrence Malick. Formerly titled "The Low Dweller", the movie is a gritty 70's esque revenge movie about an ex-con who vows to take vengeance on those who murdered his brother. Which as you can imagine such a vendetta would it somewhat complicates matters with his girlfriend, whom he is set to marry. The film is set in Indiana in 1968 and Bale plays the ex-con 'Slim', with the legendary Robert Duvall in talks for a supporting role. The script has been compared to the tone of "No Country For Old Men". In what could end up being a battle of the intense method actors, Viggo Mortensen is being sought to play the bad guy with Casey Affleck, Garrett Hedlund, Taylor Kitsch and Channing Tatum all in the mix to play Bale's brother. Scott Cooper, who previously wrote, produced and directed the critically acclaimed country music film Crazy Heart, will helm. The script for The Low Dweller appeared at number 5 on the 2008 Black List and has a great story between it having being written by Brad Inglesby, a then 27 year old AFI grad who was still living with his parents and working for his father€™s insurance business in Pennsylvania when he wrote it. The film very nearly got going that year as a Leonardo DiCaprio starring project for Ridley Scott but it never got to film, I believe because of the writers strike when re-drafting was required and then their schedules didn't align. Sometime later it nearly got going with director Rupert Sanders, who instead delivers Snow White and the Huntsman later this year. You may remember Christian Bale was circling the Oldboy remake last year but it looks like he is going for an original screenplay to get out his vengeance post-Batman. Let's really hope he and Mortensen end up squaring off in this one. source - heat vision