He’s being pursued, I hear, for two different Marvel comics movies. Matthew Vaughn is said to want him for “X Men: First Class.” Fassbender would play young Magneto, the precursor for Ian McKellen’s later character. James McAvoy is already signed to play Young Xavier.I'm leaning towards X-Men, because my head might explode to have James McAvoy and Michael in the same movie!
At the same time, Fassbender is being pursued to play the villain in “Spider Man 4,” aka “No Toby Maguire Here.”
Two different movies from Marvel, but two different studios: Fox for the first, and Columbia for the second. He can’t do both.
Josh Brolin looks perfect for this. Michael Fassbender as a crazed minion of John Malkovich? Oh, yeah. Been waiting for this one and it comes out on my birthday!
Production begins next week in the U.K. on Focus Features and BBC Films’ romantic drama Jane Eyre, produced by Ruby Films and based on Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel. Cary Fukunaga, whose debut feature was Focus’ award-winning Sin Nombre, is directing Jane Eyre, to which Focus holds worldwide rights. Focus CEO James Schamus made the announcement today.
Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) and Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds) will star in the lead roles of the romantic drama. In the story, Jane Eyre (Wasikowska), flees Thornfield House, where she works as a governess for wealthy Edward Rochester (Fassbender). The isolated and imposing residence – and Mr. Rochester’s coldness – have sorely tested the young woman’s resilience, forged years earlier when she was orphaned. As Jane reflects upon her past and recovers her natural curiosity, she will return to Mr. Rochester – and the terrible secret that he is hiding…
The film is a coming-of-age story centering on 15-year-old Mia (Jarvis) who is in a constant state of war with her family and the world around her, without any creative outlet for her considerable energies save a secret love of hip-hop dance. When she meets her party-girl mother's charming new boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender), she is amazed to find he returns her attention, and believes he might help her start to make sense of her life. A clear-eyed, potent portrait of teenage sexuality and vulnerability.Wow. This film looks amazing. It has a limited release in the US January 15, and will be also shown On Demand starting Jan. 13th. Michael Fassbender's Hunger becomes available on DVD on Feb. 16th so I can finally see another great performance of his that everyone has been talking about.
Hopscotch will release ‘The Talking Cure’ directed by Cronenberg, starring Keira Knightly, Michael Fassbender, Christoph Waltz. A beautiful young woman, driven mad by her past. An ambitious doctor on a mission to succeed. An esteemed mentor with a revolutionary cure. Let the mind games begin…'"I am doing cartwheels!! Christoph Waltz and Fassie in the same film again, AND directed by the genius Cronenberg. Joy!!
Project is a period piece but will play up the gothic elements of the story about Jane (Wasikowska), a demure governess who discovers her surly employer Rochester (Fassbender) is harboring a dark secret. The book is one of the most iconic in English literature and has been the subject of numerous previous adaptations.I am doing a little happy dance this morning!!
In 1936, the Wollners - a German family living in rural Town Creek, Maryland - are contacted by the Third Reich to host a visiting scholar, Professor Richard Wirth. In need of money, they accept Wirth into their home. Wirth's grand occult project seals the Wollners off from the rest of the world and makes them players in a horrifying game of survival. After 71 years, in 2007, Evan Marshall's life has stalled at twenty-five years old. Left without answers after his older brother Victor's disappearance from a camping trip near Town Creek, he has tried to move on. But when Victor returns one night, very much alive and having escaped his captors, Evan asks no questions - at his brother's request, he loads their rifles, packs up their boat and follows him back to Town Creek on a mission of revenge that will test them in every possible way...Watch a clip from the film after the jump.
The emerging star talks about movies that influenced him and his obsession with TV theme songs.Hearing him do Magnum, P.I. was a trip!
Empire magazine has this new image of Michael Fassbender in Centurion, due out in spring of 2010. Michael Fassbender plays Quintus, part of Rome's reputedly 'lost' Ninth Legion, who in Centurion are deep in hostile Pict country.
Said Fassbender, "There's certainly a lot of head-chopping. I guess you can always make modern-day parallels, to the occupation of Iraq. But it's the idea of someone who believes in an ethos, becomes disillusioned and comes to his own sort of beliefs. So there are parallels, and it's interesting when you take it out of our timeframe and stick it back 2,000 years."
I saw Inglourious Basterds earlier this week, and I've just been letting it sink in. I think I need to see it again because there is so much going on, that I know I didn't catch it all.
First off, it's an excellent film -- and also a lot of fun. From the trailers and many commercials, you know the set up. Brad Pitt's Aldo Raine leads a group of American Jews in Nazi occupied France looking for Nazi scalps. The Germans call them the "Basterds". Horror director Eli Roth plays one of the "basterds" who is known as the Bear Jew, and his choice of weapon is a baseball bat.
What you haven't seen in the commercials is the character of Col. Landa, "The Jew Hunter," sent to find all the hidden Jews left in France. Landa is played by Christoph Waltz, an actor known for TV work in Germany, who won the best actor award at Cannes for this role. Waltz is simply amazing as Landa. Waltz, a German, also speaks French and English fluently. Tarantino said he despaired of finding a German actor for this role, as they couldn't speak the English parts well enough. He told NPR's Fresh Air, "What I write is a kind of poetry, and I needed someone who could speak my English lines like poetry." As Waltz auditioned with the first scene of the movie, minutes in, Tarantino knew he had found his Landa. It's a tour de force performance, and I hope earns him a nomination for supporting actor for this film. He charms, and also has just this lethal edge to him the entire time. Watching him eat streudel and fussing with a cigarette in one scene, you're fascinated, and terrified for the other character he's questioning. He simply owns every scene he's in, including those with Brad Pitt.
Ah, Brad Pitt as Aldo Raines. He just chews up his part as the Southern boy leader of this band of basterds. Total fun to see him in this part - "And I want my scalps!" I also loved Michael Fassbender as Hilcox, a former film critic (!) sent on a spy mission to pose as a German officer. He explains his accent away to some Germans by saying he was in the movie, Die weiße Hölle vom Piz Palü, (The White Hell of Piz Palu) a movie about a mountain disaster in the Alps. I actually looked up clips from that movie on YouTube, and notably, it's a silent film! Michael Fassbender is very funny in this movie, and it's great to see him have a chance to show a sense of humor for once.
There are so many movie references that fly by in this movie. It's a movie about movies, from the Spaghetti Western music used, to the movie theater that plays a prominent part in the plot. I actually laughed out loud at one point because of the music Tarantino chose to use -- David Bowie's "Putting out Fire (with Gasoline)" from Cat People! I have to say, it made sense at that point of the film, but it was just crazy, too. Brad Pitt's character has a noose scar that is never ever explained in the film, but is yet another film reference to a Clint Eastwood western.
I read this great review of Inglourious Basterds on Spoutblog before I saw the film, and I kept thinking about what Karina Longworth had pointed out. This is a film about propaganda and rumors.
The film’s guiding spirit is encapsulated in an exclamation by Landa in the first scene: “I love rumors! Facts can be so misleading.” Tarantino has made a movie about World War II filtered through rumor — verbally-transmitted urban legends, to be precise. There is no casual conversation in Inglourious Basterds; virtually every scene involves an interrogation and a chance for someone to brag about and/or live up to their reputation. Conscious of the world they live in — ie, not Hitlers, not ours, but Tarantino’s — characters on both sides of the divide take an active role in their own myth-making, to make sure that word gets out as to who they are and why they are to be feared, and everyone takes great pride in knowing that word is getting around. The film’s most oft repeated phrase is “What have you heard?”Longworth saw the film at Cannes, and hated it, and then she watched it again and gained a new appreciation for Tarantino's film.
Empire magazine has some shots from the set of the upcoming film Centurion. This one shows Michael Fassbender on the run from some savage Picts.
...the story sees a Roman legion venture north of Hadrian's Wall and encounter some very unfriendly natives. For another, it may feature dudes in leather skirts and helmets, but it's also a horror movie, with the Romans being picked off in the woods. And thirdly, it's the second film in a row for Marshall that centres around a team venturing through a wall into Scotland and really regretting it.Centurion is due out later this year.
The Times has a great interview with Michael Fassbender, fresh off his success at the BAFTAS for Hunger. Hunger comes out on DVD in the UK this month, and will be released at the end of March in the US.
Hunger, he says, as we slip into a nearby café, has “changed things hugely. Now I can get into rooms early when projects are starting up”. In recent months he has been mentioned as Heathcliffe in a new film of Wuthering Heights and in the Dennis Waterman role, opposite Ray Winstone, in a movie version of The Sweeney. But the most exciting is Inglourious Basterds (sic), Tarantino’s Second World War tale of a suicide squad sent to kill as many Nazis as they can.
Filming ended in December and Fassbender had a blast playing a British commando who teams up with Brad Pitt’s homicidal Yanks. His character, Lt Archie Hicox, was based, Tarantino told him, on a young George Sanders. “So I got out all the original Saints and Sanders films. It’s a very particular way of speaking, affected accent and mannerisms. I just really went to town and found quite a lot of humour in it, I hope.” Pitt certainly thought so. “In our first scene together I started doing my character and he started laughing.” He smiles. “He was very supportive.”
Read the rest here.
This is Michael Fassbender's amazing film Hunger, which has gotten raves on the festival circuit and will finally get released in the U.S. in March. It opens limited on March 20th, and should have a wider release on March 27th. Michael plays Bobby Sands, and lost an incredible amount of weight to show the hunger strike.
Fassie Fans rejoice! Michael Fassbender has signed on for what looks to be a very cool new movie.
Michael Fassbender, Dominic West and Bond girl Olga Kurylenko are girding their loins for Neil Marshall's Britain-set sword-and-sandals thriller "Centurion," for "Slumdog Millionaire" producer Christian Colson of Celador Films.
The movie, billed as a thriller set during the Roman invasion of Britain in A.D. 117, tells the story of Quintus Dias, sole survivor of a Pictish raid on a Roman frontier fort, who marches north with General Virilus' legendary Ninth Legion, under orders to wipe the Picts from the face of the Earth and destroy their leader, Gorlacon.
