He's sometimes been fantasy cast as a potential new James Bond and played an MI6 agent on screen before (in Haywire). Now Michael Fassbender is looking to set up his own spy franchise, signing on to star in and produce Malko.
Eric Warren Singer is on board to write the script, which will draw from Gerard de Villiers’ S.A.S. series, running to around to 200 books. The franchise follows Malko Linge, an Austrian nobleman and freelance CIA operative who spent his formative years in a special Nazi work camp for captured spies. Malko is a gentleman warrior without a country who works according to his own moral code and lives with a wicked wit and a lust for life. SAS in this case stands for Son Altesse Sérénissime, "His Serene Highness" and this initial film is largely based on Berlin: Checkpoint Charlie, the 29th book in the series, published in 1973.
Lionsgate is backing the film, taking the rights to the books from production company Black Magic Films, which developed the idea of Malko films with de Villiers before his death in 2013.
Fassbender, who is on screens now in Dark Phoenix, has a role in Kung Fury 2, which will film this summer.
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