The health concerns about necessary weight gain that kept him out of Michael Mann's Ferrari biopic might not have seemed like a blessing for Christian Bale, but his Out Of The Furnace director Scott Cooper is certainly seeing it that way. He's now agreed to reunite with the actor for his next project, Hostiles.
According to Variety, Cooper is writing and will direct the Western film, which will feature Bale as a legendary American Army captain in 1892 with a burning hatred for Native Americans.
When he's ordered to escort a dying Cheyenne war chief and his family back to tribal lands in Montana from an isolated outpost in New Mexico, he's initially resistant, but agrees to the task. Along the way, the pair meets a young widow whose family was murdered on the plains, and the small unexpected unit must band together to overcome distrust, the landscape's challenges and hostile Comanche tribes intent on making sure they don't reach their destination.
It'll mark Bale's first Western since 3:10 To Yuma, and sounds like the ideal project for the former Batman to channel his gruff side into. Bale will be seen in Terrence Malick's Knight Of Cups and Weightless, and has also provided voice and performance capture for Bagheera in Andy Serkis' _Jungle Book: Origin_s, which won't reach our screens until 2017 at the earliest.