Christian Bale set to star in Todd Field's The Creed Of Violence

Christian Bale is in a good place career-wise, and not just because of the impressive box-office performance of his last Bat-movie, The Dark Knight Rises .

He has recently completed shooting on revenge thriller Out Of The Furnace , as well on working two new movies with his The New World director Terrence Malick (who's in danger of losing his mystique if he doesn't slow down a notch).

And now Variety is reporting that Bale is in early negotiations to add Todd Field's The Creed Of Violence to his schedule, tackling a role once linked to Leonardo DiCaprio .

Based on a novel by Boston Teran, Creed is set in 1910, and follows the uneasy alliance between assassin Rawbone (the Bale part) and FBI noob John Lourdes. According to the novel's synopsis, it's "set against a backdrop of intrigue and corruption… a saga about the scars of abandonment, the greed of war and America's history of foreign intervention for the sake of oil."

Could be a rich blend of gritty period violence with a side order of political allegory then.

Field only has two features to his name as a director, In The Bedroom and Little Children . Both are keenly observed relationship dramas that visit dark places, so Creed could be an interesting match for him.

Don't expect to see this one before 2014 though.

Matt Maytum
Editor, Total Film

I'm the Editor at Total Film magazine, overseeing the running of the mag, and generally obsessing over all things Nolan, Kubrick and Pixar. Over the past decade I've worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+, and you can often hear me nattering on the Inside Total Film podcast. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.