Christian Bale has set up his next project and it sounds absolutely wild in all the best ways. According to Deadline, Christian Bale is set to produce and star in an adaptation of David Kushner’s Vanity Fair article The Church of Living Dangerously, which revolves around a drug-smuggling preacher.
John Lee Bishop didn’t have the best childhood; Among other things, his uncles would force him into bare-knuckle fights with other kids for their amusement, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg of Bishop’s wild life. He eventually became pastor of The Living Hope Church, which grew so large that it filled an 8500 square foot former K-Mart superstore in Portland, Oregon. A natural showman, Bishop would bring exotic animals along for his sermons and became quite wealthy. Unfortunately, he didn’t handle it well and developed an addiction to painkillers and a drinking problem, not to mention being caught in an affair with one of his church employees. His son also developed a meth and heroin habit, which Bishop also took part in as an attempt to better understand their power over his son. Bishop then began smuggling drugs for a Mexican cartel and was later busted after 20 runs and sentenced to five years behind bars. Certainly sounds meaty enough for Christian Bale to do something outrageous with the part. The Church of the Living Dangerously will be written by Charles Randolph, who co-wrote Adam McKay’s The Big Short, which also starred Christian Bale.
Christian Bale will next be seen in Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder as Gorr the God Butcher. The Marvel film is set to hit theaters on May 6, 2022.