The Deep Blue Good-By Sunk By Bale Injury

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Just when it looked like the long-gestating adaptation of John D. MacDonald’s hugely influential Travis McGee novel The Deep Blue Good-By was about to set sail, a cannonball of Christian Bale proportions sinks the project once again.

Fans of classic crime fiction have Bale's torn knee ligaments to thank for keeping director James Mangold’s cameras from rolling next month in Florida; leaving the Leonardo DiCaprio produced film floundering.

The director had been busy rounding up a stellar supporting cast including Peter Dinklage, Rosamund Pike and Nicola Peltz – from a script which has seen such genre luminaries as Dennis Lehane and Scott Frank take a bash at bringing Travis, the ‘salvage consultant’ come beach bum who lives in Fort Lauderdale on a houseboat called The Busted Flush (named so because it was won during a poker game), who is lured into a mystery surrounding a fortune brought back to Florida by a World War II solider, to life.

Given the action-heavy script and with Bale side-lined, there is some debate about what will happen to the movie. Some source have said it’ll be scrapped entirely, especially as the studios other choices, including Brad Pitt, were not available. Others believe the film will wait for its first choice McGee to recover enough to handle the demanding action scenes.

All this means that Mangold is now free to concentrate on the next Wolverine movie.

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