Michael Fassbender is all set to star in and produce a new spy franchise ‘Malko’ at Lionsgate. An adaptation of Gerard de Villiers’ bestselling S.A.S. book series.

American Hustle scribe Eric Warren Singer will adapt the story that follows Malko Linge, an Austrian nobleman and freelance CIA operative who spent his formative years in a special Nazi work camp for captured spies, where he learned the intricate dark arts of tradecraft from the best. Now an adult living in a reclaimed family manor fallen into disrepair, Malko becomes a spy for hire. He is the ultimate agent without an agency — a gentleman warrior without a country who works according to his own moral code, and lives the only way a man who has grown up in the face of death can — with a wicked wit and a lust for all things in life, even the things that might kill him.

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Fassbender will produce via his company DMC Film. Joining him will be Black Magic’s Lars Sylvest, Kingsgate Films’ Greg Shapiro (The Hurt Locker), and Rocket Science’s Thorsten Schumacher, who developed the property with Sylvest and de Villiers. Singer will executive produce along with Jason Clark and DMC’s Conor McCaughan. Lionsgate executives James Myers and Brady Fujikawa will oversee the project for the studio.

We are enormously excited to be teaming with Greg Shapiro and Michael Fassbender as well as Lars Sylvest from Black Magic and Thorsten Schumacher from Rocket Science to develop Malko,” said Lionsgate boss Joe Drake. “This is a character with a tremendous 200-title library of amazing spy stories to draw from, and we believe we have a world-class creative team in place with Michael and Eric Warren Singer as we move forward on this project.”

Fassbender was last seen as Magneto in the box office flop ‘X-Men: Dark Phoenix’. He is currently rumoured to be attached to Mel Gibson’s ‘The Wild Bunch’ and David Sandberg’s ‘Kung Fury 2’.