Brendan Gleeson adds Michael Fassbender to his directorial debut, At Swim-Two-Birds

Irish actor Brendan Gleeson has got a pretty busy few weeks at the movies coming up. He'll be wrapping up his decade long stint as Mad Eye Moody in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Not long after that he'll be starring in the dark cop comedy, The Guard, alongside Don Cheadle. But for the last few years, he's been steadily piecing together his passion project and directorial debut, adapting the 1939 novel, At Swim-Two-Birds.

Gleeson first acquired the rights back in 2004, and he's been adapting the script while trying to secure funding ever since. The novel by Brian O'Nolan(pseudonym Flann O'Brien) is considered a masterpiece by many, and a perfect example of metafiction.  The story involves three seemingly unrelated tales, but eventually the characters from each begin to crossover, leading to them working together and turning on the author.  It's actually a lot deeper than that, involving Irish legends and other stuff. Sounds like something Charlie Kaufman would dream up.

Over the years, Gleeson has managed to snag a number of great Irish actors to fill out a few of the many characters. Colin Farrell, Gabriel Byrne, Cillian Murphy, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Brendan's son Domhall were the initial few to join. Now it looks like Meyers may be out, but more than making up for it is the addition of Hollywood's "It" guy, Michael Fassbender. Gleeson will play an uncle to the main character in the film, although nobody else's roles are clear just yet.

ScreenDaily, who broke the news of Fassbender's joining, also notes that financing appears to have come together, and that a start date in the spring of 2012 is looking likely.