Christian Bale Solves A Murder With Help From Edgar Allen Poe In Netflix’s ‘The Pale Blue Eye’ Teaser

After an anonymous couple of years, minus his performance in the Best Picture-nominated Ford v Ferrari, Christian Bale came back in a big way in 2022. He butchered gods in Marvel’s Thor: Love and Thunder; was told to “shut up” and let Taylor Swift sing in Amsterdam; and he’ll investigate a murder with Edgar Allen Poe in The Pale Blue Eye.

The 1800s-set Netflix mystery-thriller follows Augustus Landor, a “world-weary detective [who] is hired to discreetly investigate the gruesome murder of a cadet,” according to the plot synopsis. “Stymied by the cadets’ code of silence, he enlists one of their own to help unravel the case — a young man the world would come to know as Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling).” Batman and Dudley Dursley from Harry Potter solving a murder? OK!

“Every character in the story has secrets,” Bale told Vanity Fair about The Pale Blue Eye (not named after the Velvet Underground song). “And while Poe seems to be the one who is clearly putting on a performance, he is actually the most sincere. Everyone else is more quietly putting on a performance, but no one is who they are pretending to be.”

The Pale Blue Eye, which also stars Robert Duvall, Gillian Anderson, and Lucy Boynton, opens in select theaters on December 23 before hitting Netflix on January 6, 2023.