This will make Christian Bale the first actor to play both Batman and The Penguin, but, seriously speaking, this looks great and "The Big Short," McKay's last feature, seems to have gained a strong following over the last few years. Christian Bale, Steve Carrell, as Donald Rumsfeld, and Amy Adams, as Lynne Cheney, will also star. Expect to see them at the 2019 Oscars. I'm particularly looking forward to Carrell's Rumsfeld.
"Christian Bale said Wednesday he will play Dick Cheney in Adam McKay's upcoming biopic of the former vice president."
"Bale was last week reported as being in talks to join the film that will reteam him with McKay following 2015's Oscar-nominated "The Big Short." The Oscar winner confirmed he has signed up to star in the untitled film in an interview with The Associated Press."
"In the same way as it was a journey of discovery with 'The Big Short,' Adam was able to take a story that most people would go comatose listening to," said Bale of the script penned by McKay. "His ability to make it startling and entertaining and intelligent without compromising anything — he's masterful at doing that."
My friend had this to say about the project by email:
"Dick Cheney was always a very smart political operator. His transition to becoming a die hard conservative is hilariously ironic as well. The man basically took five deferments from Vietnam to avoid the war, but got mad at protesters on college campuses at the time who he thought were soft liberals standing against the awesome might and judgement of the American military."
"Cheney also basically engineered his way into becoming the vice president by fleecing a whole bunch of people into a political parlor game and managed to engineer expanding the presidents power to become far more of a powerful imperial presence than Nixon could ever dream of. If you would like to read great books about it. Angler by Barton Gellman and Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency & the Subversion of American Democracy by Charlie Savage paint a very good portrait of who Dick Cheney is as a political operator."
"However, Bush's presidency was always a farce. One of the best books on how Bush manipulated the media into selling a war and the dumb attempts to drum up patriotic propaganda was Frank Rich's The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina."
