Michael Keaton joins Robert De Niro in crime thriller The Whisper Man
Michael Keaton is to appear alongside Robert De Niro in the crime thriller ‘The Whisper Man’.
The 73-year-old actor will cameo opposite the ‘Heat’ star, 81, in director James Ashcroft’s upcoming film for Netflix and AGBO, Deadline reports.
The outlet added that Keaton’s role in ‘The Whisper Man’ will be small, though will be a big moment for the ‘Batman’ star and De Niro as it will be the first time the two actors have shared the screen since 1997’s ‘Jackie Brown’.
‘The Whisper Man’ – which is slated to enter production this spring on the US East Coast – will also star John Carroll Lynch, Hamish Linklater, Owen Teague, Acston Luca Porto, Adam Scott and Michelle Monaghan.
The film will be an adaptation of author Alex North’s 2019 novel ‘The Whisper Man’, which tells the story of a widowed crime writer whose search for his abducted eight-year-old son leads him to seek help from his estranged father, a retired police detective – uncovering unsettling links to a decades-old case involving a notorious serial killer known as ‘The Whisper Man’.
The screenplay will be written by Ben Jacoby and Chase Palmer, while ‘Avengers’ directors Joe and Anthony Russo and Angela Russo-Otstot and Michael Disco will produce under the AGBO banner.
Meanwhile, Kassee Whiting will serve as executive producer for AGBO alongside Marcus Viscidi.
Keaton could recently be seen in 2024’s ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’, where he reprised his role as the titular ghost from 1988’s ‘Beetlejuice’.
The movie – which also starred Winona Ryder, Jenna Ortega, Catherine O’Hara and Willem Dafoe – follows Lydia Deetz, who is forced to confront her past, and the mischievous spirit Beetlejuice, after her rebellious teenage daughter accidentally opens a portal back to the Netherworld.
While he was happy to return for the legacy sequel, Keaton insisted Beetlejuice shouldn’t be the main character, nor “drive” the plot of the flick.
The ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ star explained to GQ: “The idea was, no, no, no, you can’t load it up with Beetlejuice, that’ll kill it.
“I think the Beetlejuice character doesn’t drive the story as much as he did in the first one. He’s more part of the storyline in this one as opposed to the first one, which is a case of this thing comes in and drives the movie a little bit.”
Even so, Keaton stressed Beetlejuice was still a “sicko” in the film.
He said: “He’s a thing. He’s more of a thing than a he or a she, he’s more of an it.
“And I’m not saying ‘it’ to be politically correct. I just viewed it as a force more than anything. I mean, there’s definitely strong male energy, like stupid male energy, which I love.
“You don’t want to touch that because it’s not like you go, ‘Well, it’s a new year and this thing would now act like that.’”
