Michael Fassbender Confirmed For Ridley Scott's 'The Counselor,' Starting In May

Michael Fassbender is going back to work with Ridley Scott. The possibility we reported a few days ago, that Fassbender might star in Scott's film version of Cormac McCarthy's script The Counselor, has come to pass. So just before the opening of Prometheus, which Scott directed and in which Fassbender appears, the duo will be at work again on a story that is being compared to No Country For Old Men.Deadline says that Fassbender will be a lawyer who thinks he can dabble in the drug trade without being consumed by it. McCarthy wrote the script last year and sold it unexpectedly just a few weeks ago. That led to it becoming a hot property. What else would you expect for a script from McCarthy that brings to mind No Country For Old Men, which won four Oscars (Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor, Best Director and Best Picture) in 2008.

Speaking of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, the next step is casting the bad guy in The Counselor. Deadline mentions several possible actors: Jeremy Renner, Bradley Cooper (newly free after the shutdown of Paradise Lost) and even Brad Pitt. Renner might actually be open, if he can be scheduled around promo duties for The Avengers and The Bourne Legacy. We'll likely hear about casting for that role very soon. The Counselor could start shooting as soon as May 1.

And, one last time, here's what producer Steve Schwartz said about the script when the sale was announced:

Since McCarthy himself wrote the script, we get his own muscular prose directly, with its sexual obsessions. It's a masculine world into which, unusually, two women intrude to play leading roles. McCarthy's wit and humor in the dialogue make the nightmare even scarier. This may be one of McCarthy's most disturbing and powerful works.