Colin Farrell set to star in The Ballad of a Small Player for Netflix

Deadline is reporting that Colin Farrell is now slated to star in the new project from Edward Berger, the director of the Academy Award-winning All Quiet on the Western Front. Farrell will be the lead in The Ballad of a Small Player, which will be a Netflix original. While Berger directs, Rowan Joffe has adapted a script that is based on the novel of the same name by Lawrence Osborne. Mike Goodridge is on board to produce through his Good Chaos banner, as well as Berger through his Nine Hours banner, along with Matthew James Wilkinson. Berger currently has a first-look deal with Netflix, which this movie will be the start of.

The plot synopsis for The Ballad of a Small Player, according to Deadline, reads,
“The story follows a high-stakes gambler who decides to lay low in Macau after his past and debts catch up with him. Along the way he encounters a kindred spirit who might just hold the key to his salvation.” Production on the film is expected to start sometime later this year.

Colin Farrell has quite a bit of streaming on the horizon. Firstly, he is currently starring in AppleTV+’s Sugar, which our Alex Maidy glows about in his review, “Based on Colin Farrell’s outstanding lead performance alone, Sugar is a must-watch for fans and non-fans alike. The potential for this to be an ongoing series leaves room for future cases for John Sugar that could delve into new elements of this over-arching narrative.” The Banshees of Inisherin star will also be starring in his anticipated spin-off from The Batman — The Penguin.

Farrell has shown his giddiness about portraying the character of the Penguin, even saying that it’s worth the long periods of applying the make-up for the role. He teased what to look forward to in the series for Max, “It was a long and really wonderful experience. It’s dark; that’s what I can tell you about it. It’s really dark. It’s really heavy, I think— it certainly was doing it. Which is not to say I didn’t have fun, I had an amazing time doing it. It’s incredibly violent. It’s one man’s rise to what he’s always dreamed of inhabiting, which is a certain power or social status.”