Speaking of Brendan Gleeson, the busy thespian is also teaming up with fellow Irish actor Michael Fassbender in not one but two upcoming movies.
The dynamic duo will team up for Assassin’s Creed, the action adventure film based on the popular video game. Assasin’s Creed is currently slated for a Christmas 2016 release. (Brendan’s son Brian is also in the flick.) Then Fassbender and Gleeson will appear in the upcoming British crime drama Trespass Against Us. Directed by Adam Scott, Trespass Against Us also stars Rory Kinnear and Sean Harris.
Incidentally, the latter British-born actor, best known for 24 Hour Party People and Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, was also slated to star as an Irish character named “Mad Sweeney” in the upcoming TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s popular epic fantasy novel American Gods. But Harris has bowed out. Replacing Harris as “Mad Sweeney” is the (not-particularly-Irish) Pablo Schreiber.
It’s fitting that Michael Fassbender is working with Brendan Gleeson these days because Fassbender’s schedule is nearly as packed as Gleeson’s. Fassbender was in the spring blockbuster X-Men: Apocalypse. And in September, look for Fassbender opposite Academy Award winner Alicia Vilkander in The Light Between Oceans. Then there is the long-awaited Terrence Malick movie Weightless, the Norwegian crime thriller, based on Jo Nesbo’s novel, The Snowman, and finally, in 2017, Alien: Covenant.
Alien: Covenant, in fact, is also an Irish collaboration of sorts. The film was written by longtime screenwriter, playwright, and producer John Logan, whose parents came to the U.S. from Northern Ireland. Logan has had a long, glittering career in Hollywood, writing the screenplays for Oscar-nominated films such as Hugo and The Aviator. Logan also wrote the screenplay for Gladiator (which was also nominated for a writing Academy Award), Any Given Sunday, Rango, and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Logan’s most recent works are the film Genius, about the life of literary editor Maxwell Perkins, as well as the Showtime TV series Penny Dreadful, which Logan created. ♦
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