According to Deadline, Emmy winner Gillian Anderson has officially found her next project with Netflix as she signs on to join the cast of Scott Cooper’s forthcoming film adaptation of The Pale Blue Eye, which will feature a young Edgar Allan Poe. This marks Anderson’s latest collaboration with the streamer following her acclaimed performance in The Crown Season 4 and the third season of the coming-of-age comedy Sex Education.
In addition to Anderson, Oscar winner Robert Duvall, Lucy Boynton (Bohemian Rhapsody), Toby Jones (First Cow), Charlotte Gainsbourg (Antichrist), Harry Lawtey (Industry), Simon McBurney (Carnival Row), and Timothy Spall (Mr. Turner) have also been cast along with Fred Hechinger (Fear Street trilogy), Hadley Robinson (Moxie), Joey Brooks (Molly’s Game), Brennan Keel Cook (Encounter), Gideon Glick (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), Matt Helm (The Tragedy of Macbeth), Steven Maier (The Plot Against America), and Charlie Tahan (Ozark).
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They will be joining previously announced lead stars Harry Melling (The Queen’s Gambit) and Oscar winner Christian Bale, who is reuniting with Cooper in their third collaboration since 2017’s Hostiles and 2013’s Out of the Furnace.
Based on the gothic thriller novel by Louis Bayard, The Pale Blue Eye revolves around the attempt to solve a series of murders that took place in 1830 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Bale will play a veteran detective in the film who investigates the murders, assisted by a detail-oriented young cadet who will later become a world-famous author, Edgar Allan Poe.
Pick up your copy of the novel here.
“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,” says the book’s official synopsis. “The next morning, an even greater horror comes to light. Someone has removed the dead man’s heart. Augustus Landor—who acquired some renown in his years as a New York City police detective—is called in to discreetly investigate. It’s a baffling case Landor must pursue in secret, for the scandal could do irreparable damage to the fledgling institution. But he finds help from an unexpected ally—a moody, 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 strange and haunted Southern poet for whom Landor develops a fatherly affection, is named Edgar Allan Poe.”
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The Pale Blue Eye will be written and directed by Scott Cooper. Cross Creek (The Trial of the Chicago 7) will finance and produce. Bale and Cooper are producing along with Grisbi Productions’ John Lesher and Cross Creek’s Tyler Thompson. Meanwhile, Tracey Landon and Grisbi’s Dylan Weathered will be serving as executive producers.
