News of Darren Aronofsky’s follow-up to the Oscar-winning film, Black Swan, first surfaced back in June last year, when it surfaced that he was looking to make a big-budget epic film based on the story of Noah’s ark, entitled, Noah. Christian Bale was first in talks for the titular role, but his involvement in the upcoming Terrence Malick films forced him to exit the project.

When news on that exit came, Michael Fassbender was announced as being eyed for the role in his place, with production hoping to start this spring. The Playlist are now reporting a few interesting updates, that involve a bit of potential hear-say, but it sounds like reliable sourcing.

During the latest Oscar Poker chat between Sasha Stone and Jeff Wells, Wells said that he’d been speaking to Aronofsky’s frequent collaborator, the Oscar-nominated cinematographer Matthew Libatique (Black Swan, Requiem For A Dream, Pi).

“…And he was telling me about ‘Noah’ and what the script is like. They’re going to start shooting in July in New York and Iceland and he says it’s really a good script. They’re really doing the story of Noah, a very unlikely subject you might think for a cutting edge fellow like Darren Aronofsky, but that’s what they’re doing. It’s going to be more likely a Fall 2013 release,” Wells shared.

Libatique’s frequent past collaborations with the writer-director would certainly suggest that he’s a credible source, and that he’ll know what Aronofsky’s expected shooting schedule is. As The Playlist note, if Noah does shoot this summer, that could potentially create a clash with Fassbender’s schedule, returning to work with his own now-frequent collaborator, Steve McQueen, on Twelve Years A Slave. As such, the lead role could well be there for the taking once more.

And not only that, but Wells says that Libatique told him that there’s another interesting role in the script that calls for a villain:

“That’s the hangup right now, they haven’t cast Noah yet. But it’s got a guy in his 40s so it’s not going to be young. It’s going to be 40s. And there’s a big villain part, gotta have a villain in the story of Noah,” Wells added. “Someone who’s saying ‘Listen, don’t listen to him. We’re fine! We don’t need to build any ark. Don’t be so alarmist! Don’t be so fundamentalist.’ You know? One of those guys. So it sounded like a lot of fun, actually.”

So potentially two male roles that we can look forward to being cast in the coming weeks or months. The original script was written by Aronofsky and producing collaborator Ari Handel (Black Swan, The Wrestler), with the brilliant John Logan (Gladiator, The Last Samurai) handling a rewrite. I can’t wait for this to start taking more shape.