A series of new images offer our first proper look at Academy Award winner Christian Bale and Harry Potter star Harry Melling in the upcoming gothic horror mystery movie, The Pale Blue Eye. Coming courtesy of Vanity Fair, the images reveal Bale as detective Augustus Landor, with Melling portraying a young Edgar Allan Poe. Together, this pair of mismatched investigators are tasked with catching a serial killer. Check out the images below.
With unkempt hair and beard, Christian Bale (The Dark Knight, Thor: Love and Thunder) looks ready to once again demonstrate his affinity for gruff intensity. Attributes that should lend themselves perfectly to the role of a world-weary, aged detective. Harry Melling, meanwhile, who has featured in the likes of The Devil All the Time and The Tragedy of Macbeth since the conclusion of the Harry Potter franchise, cuts a surprisingly happy-looking Edgar Allan Poe who has yet to be beaten down by the harshness of the world. No doubt the events of The Pale Blue Eye will speed up this beating.
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“Every character in the story has secrets,” Bale says of the inherent mystery within The Pale Blue Eye. “And while Poe seems to be the one who is clearly putting on a performance, he is actually the most sincere. Everyone else is more quietly putting on a performance, but no one is who they are pretending to be.”
The Relationship Between Augustus & Edgar is Central to The Pale Blue Eye
Netflix/Vanity Fair
Adapted from Louis Bayard’s 2006 novel of the same name, The Pale Blue Eye will drop audiences into 1830 and follows veteran detective Augustus Landor who is called in to investigate a series of murders at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. Now a restless widower, Landor agrees to come out of retirement to take on the case. The real twist comes when Landor is partnered up with a young cadet at the academy, who just so happens to be real-life legendary writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe.
It is this relationship between Augustus and Edgar that is central to The Pale Blue Eye. As Bale explains it, “He dismisses him initially, but comes to find him to be the centerpiece of his life, which he would be quite embarrassed to admit, with his age and standing and everything. He does find himself maybe learning new things, and is certainly reminded of things that he’d forgotten about life.”
The Pale Blue Eye also stars Gillian Anderson (The Crown), Lucy Boynton (Bohemian Rhapsody), Charlotte Gainsbourg (Antichrist), Toby Jones (First Cow), Harry Lawtey (Industry), Simon McBurney (Carnival Row), Timothy Spall (Mr. Turner), Hadley Robinson (Moxie), Joey Brooks (Molly’s Game), Brennan Cook (Encounter), Gideon Glick (Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), Fred Hechinger (The White Lotus), Matt Helm (Tragedy of Macbeth), Steven Maier (The Plot Against America), Charlie Tahan (Ozark) and Robert Duvall (The Judge).
Directed by Scott Cooper, The Pale Blue Eye is scheduled to be released in select cinemas on December 23, 2022, before its Netflix release on January 6, 2023.
