Christian Bale Eyes 'The Deep Blue Good-By'; Turned Down 'True Detective'

It's taken quite awhile for 20th Century Fox to mount an adaptation of John D. MacDonald's popular Travis McGee mystery novel, The Deep Blue Good-By. James Mangold (The Wolverine) may be the current guy set to head up the film but he's hardly the first they went after. Oliver Stone and Paul Greengrass took a look at it, too, and Leonardo DiCaprio had been attached to star. But he had to drop out and will merely produce, leaving the door wide open for another A-lister to take his spot, and it appears Mangold has his sights set on his 3:10 to Yuma star, Christian Bale.

According to The Wrap, Bale is Mangold and DiCaprio's choice to star although they stress no deal is in place. Bale is apparently interested in the role of McGee, the beach bum and self-described "salvage consultant" who will help anyone find anything for the right price. The Deep Blue Good-By is the first of an amazing 21 novels McGee has appeared in, the last one in 1984. So obviously if these are a hit they could lead to a fairly lengthy franchise, the first for Bale since he stopped playing Batman a couple of years ago. The most recent script was written by Dennis Lehane, DiCaprio's writer on Shutter Island.

So while Bale is just the latest name to emerge for that film, he's also been something of a wish list candidate to star in the second season of HBO's True Detective. Writer Nic Pizzolatto has said there will be four leads this time and it looks like Colin Farrell and Taylor Kitsch will occupy two of those, but Bale won't have anything to do with it. The Wrap says Bale turned down an offer to join the hit series which just earned a whopping 12 Emmy nominations. No other details are available on that so we don't know if Farrell or Kitsch took the part Bale had been up for.