Christian Bale Reteaming With 'The Fighter' And 'American Hustle' Director David O. Russell For A Big New Movie

Fans of The Fighter and American Hustle will be happy to hear that director David O. Russell is reteaming with Christian Bale for a big new movie that is being put together at New Regency as part of their overall deal with 20th Century Fox, which is now situated at Disney.

Deadline has news of the new David O. Russell movie in the works at New Regency, which would be the first feature film from the director since Joy with Jennifer Lawrence in 2015. The project is on the fast track to production right now with an eye towards starting production this April, presumably for an awards season release late this year. But unfortunately, any details on the story are being kept under wraps at this time.

The last time David O. Russell and Christian Bale collaborated was on American Hustle, which earned Oscar nominations for both of them as Best Director and Best Actor respectively, as well as eight other nominations, including Best Picture. Matthew Budman was an executive producer on the movie, and he will be reuniting with David O. Russell for this new project.

Before that, Russell and Bale also worked on The Fighter together, which also earned the two Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Actor in a Supporting Role, the latter of which resulted in a win for the actor. The film was also nominated for Best Picture.

Both of those movies required severe physical transformations for Christian Bale, but the actor said last fall that he was done losing and gaining dramatic amounts of weight for movie roles. The actor has fluctuated pounds for various roles, most famously dropping down to 185 pounds for The Machinist, and then gaining 100 pounds immediately afterwards to star in Batman Begins. Most recently he also gained 40 pounds in order to play former Vice President Dick Cheney in Adam McKay's Vice.

Of course, the lack of transformation doesn't stop Bale from giving outstanding performances, as evidenced by his work in Ford v Ferrari. So we're very interested in seeing what Bale is going to do in this movie, and we hope it doesn't preclude him from following through on his talks to co-star in Thor: Love & Thunder.