Christian Bale Meets Edgar Allan Poe In New Movie Trailer
Christian Bale stars in The Pale Blue Eye as an investigator who meets Edgar Allen Poe during the latter's time at West Point.
Christian Bale is investigating a murder alongside a famous author in the new Netflix movie The Pale Blue Eye. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the actor will be leading the period mystery as investigator Augustus Landor, and his partner in solving the central crime will be a young cadet named Edgar Allan Poe. The movie will be released on the streaming giant on January 6, 2023, and Netflix has dropped the first teaser trailer.
The movie is based on a novel by Louis Bayard and follows Christian Bale’s character as he is called upon to investigate the murder of a West Point cadet whose corpse is mysteriously lacking a heart. He faces hostility from the academy and the town around it as they try to protect the new school. But he receives the assistance of disillusioned cadet Edgar Allan Poe, who is played by Harry Potter alum Harry Melling.
Edgar Allan Poe did have a short stint at West Point in 1830, but he quickly grew disillusioned with the strict level of discipline and the life of a cadet. He left his classes in January 1831 and was withdrawn from West Point in March of the same year. The book and the Netflix adaptation use this slender window in the writer’s history to tell a story that Poe himself would have appreciated.
The period piece is directed by Scott Cooper, who is also producing alongside Christian Bale. The school and its surrounding town are populated by Gillian Anderson, Lucy Boynton, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Toby Jones, Harry Lawtey, Simon McBurney, Hadley Robinson, Timothy Spall, and Robert Duvall. The movie will be released in select theaters on December 23, 2022, before it becomes available on Netflix.
Christian Bale has been busy with a lot of projects this year. He joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the villainous Gorr the God Butcher in Thor: Blood and Thunder, and also starred in another period mystery, David O. Russell’s Amsterdam. The Pale Blue Eye is his third release in 2022 and will be the next in a long and honored career.
The actor’s first major role was in Steven Spielberg’s 1987 World War II drama Empire of the Sun, about a British youth surviving the Japanese occupation of China. He has appeared in quite a few period pieces since then, including Little Women, Newsies, and Public Enemies. He is perhaps best known either as Patrick Bates in American Psycho or as Bruce Wayne in the Dark Knight Batman movies.
No matter what movie he appears in, Christian Bale is always able to transport audiences to another time and place, and he is no stranger to the speech and mannerisms of eras past. Matching him up with Edgar Allan Poe as a supporting character is casting that plays upon the star’s strengths as an actor. While Netflix has shown the public very little of Christian Bale’s new movie, the short trailer for The Pale Blue Eye hints that the actor will once again enthrall audiences in his latest role.
