Collider is reporting that X-Men: Dark Phoenix star Michael Fassbender has signed on to produce and star in Lionsgate’s action spy thriller Malko. Based on Gerard de Villiers’ bestselling book series S.A.S. and set to be scripted by Eric Warren Singer, the movie will be primarily based upon de Villier’s Chechpoint Charlie novel.
The film will see Fassbender as Malko Linge, an Austrian nobleman and freelance CIA operative who spent his formative years in a Nazi work camp for captured spies, where he honed his craft. Malko is described as “the ultimate agent without an agency — a gentleman warrior without a country who works according to his own moral code, and lives the only way a man who has grown up in the face of death can — with a wicked wit and a lust for all things in life, even the things that might kill him.”
“We are enormously excited to be teaming with Greg Shapiro and Michael Fassbender as well as Lars Sylvest from Black Magic and Thorsten Schumacher from Rocket Science to develop Malko,” said Lionsgate’s Joe Drake. “This is a character with a tremendous 200-title library of amazing spy stories to draw from, and we believe we have a world-class creative team in place with Michael and Eric Warren Singer as we move forward on this project.”
Fassbender can currently be seen in cinemas in X-Men: Dark Phoenix (although not for much longer, judging by its box office) and is gearing up to shoot David Sandberg’s action comedy Kung Fury, where he’ll star alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eiza Gonzalez and David Hasselhoff.
