Colin Farrell will be lending his charm to The Ballad of a Small Player. The Netflix film is set to be helmed by All Quiet on the Western Front‘s Edward Berger. Deadline reports that production on the film is set to begin later this year.

Based on Lawrence Osborne‘s acclaimed 2014 novel of the same name, The Ballad of a Small Player will star Farrell as a high-stakes gambler and con man who poses as a member of the British aristocracy. On the run in his native England, he flees to the Chinese gambling mecca of Macau, where he finds a kindred spirit who may be the person who can redeem him. It will be the next project for helmer Berger, whose 2022 adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front was released to near-universal acclaim and an impressive number of streaming hours for a non-English-language film on Netflix. His next film, the Vatican City thriller Conclave, is set to premiere this fall.

What Is Colin Farrell Working On Now?

Farrell has had a busy few years; in 2022, he starred in the DC Comics blockbuster The Batman under heavy prosthetics as the villainous Penguin, the Ron Howard survival drama Thirteen Lives, and the Martin McDonagh black comedy The Banshees of Inisherin, the latter of which earned him his first Academy Award nomination. After a relatively quiet 2023, he can currently be seen as detective John Sugar in Apple’s genre-bending noir series Sugar, which Farrell also executive produces. He also lent his voice to The Spaceman, a short film that was released this year. Later this year, he is set to reprise his The Batman role on the Max series The Penguin. He can next be seen alongside Margot Robbie in the romantic fantasy A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, from After Yang director Kogonada; that film is currently in production.

The Ballad of a Small Player will be written by Rowan Joffé (28 Weeks Later, The Informer). Mike Goodridge will produce via Good Chaos, with Berger via Nine Hours and Matthew James Wilkinson. Author Berger‘s novel The Forgiven was previously adapted into a film in 2022, starring Ralph Fiennes, Jessica Chastain, and Matt Smith.

The Ballad of a Small Player is set to begin production later this year; it has not yet set a release date. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.

via Collider