Actor: Michael Fassbender |

Hamlet and Macbeth are two of the most important roles an actor can perform – and hot property Michael Fassbender has just been lined up to play the latter. The Scottish play is famous for it’s gothic horror and witchcraft, effortlessly combining murder, betrayal and greed to make it one of Shakespeare’s most adapted plays.

Filming is due to begin later this year with Justin Kurzel (Snowtown) lined up to direct. The script, written by Todd Louiso and Jacob Koskoff, is said to be one of the most in-demand ahead of the Cannes Film Festival.

Macbeth tells the story of the eponymous Scottish lord who, after a chat with three ambiguous witches, sets about slaughtering his nearest and dearest in order to become king. There’s plenty in the story to transfer to film – blood, battles and ghosts for starters – and if can Kurzel manages to honour the subtleties as well as the gore, we should be in for a treat.

Fassbender, meanwhile, is currently filming the mutant sequel X-Men: Days of Future Past with James McAvoy (who coincidentally has just finished playing Macbeth in the West End).

It will be produced by See Saw – the same people who were behind Fassbender’s previous tour-de-force, Shame,

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It’s that time of year again. The Academy Awards are looming, and all the way over in La La Land the little gold men are being polished, frocks are being assembled and a Jack Russell Terrier is hogging all the front pages. As per usual, the nominations for this year’s ceremony are pretty obvious; it’s the usual spread of visual excellence and hero to zero stories.

Brad Pitt appears in two of the nine Best Picture hopefuls: Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, and Bennett Miller’s Moneyball. Spielberg’s wartime masterpiece War Horse gets a nod, as well as Martin Scorsese’s 3D spectacular Hugo. The safe money would go on either The Tree of Life or The Artist, the silent black and white film with relentless critical acclaim, and not just because one of its stars is a skateboarding dog.

Gary Oldman is nominated for Best Actor for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and really should win it, too. His performance was a masterclass in simplistic acting, commanding the screen with his voice and truly keeping you hanging on to every word. He’s up against Brad Pitt (Moneyball), George Clooney (The Descendants), Jean Dujardin (The Artist) and Demián Bichir (A Better Life). And lo, here lies the problem. No Michael Fassbender.

It goes without saying that the Academy is simply unlikely to award anything a film that focuses on the miserable life of a sex addict, but for Michael Fassbender, whose previous roles include Magneto in X-Men: First Class and Carl Jung in David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, it’ll still come as a slap in the face. Before the final shortlist was revealed, film critic Roger Ebert commented: “For Fassbender, the nomination itself will likely be the award, because the image-concious Academy is unlikely to honour a performance as a compulsive masturbator.”

Fassbender is still nominated for a BAFTA, showing that at least the British Academy know what they are doing. It simply seems incredibly unfair that one of the most talked about performances this year has been overlooked because the Oscar board are too concerned with their public image. Perhaps they should take a leaf out of Fassbender’s book. It really is a terrible shame (no pun intended).

The full list of Oscar nominees can be found HERE

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