I loved Tom Tykwer's Perfurme: The Story of a Murderer, starring Ben Whishaw as a sociopathic serial killer. Whishaw's performance in that film -- in which he had very little dialog and had to convey almost everything through facial expression and body language -- was just outstanding. In poking around IMDb a bit while writing some Sundance reviews, I found out that Whishaw (most recently seen in Todd Hayne's I'm Not There) has three new projects lined up, and I'm excited about all of them.

First up is The Restraint of Beasts (currently in post-prod), an adaptation of Magnus Mills's first novel. The film is being directed by Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski, whose film My Summer of Love back in 2004 first brought Emily Blunt to notice.The darkly comedic story is about an unnamed supervisor (presumably Whishaw) working with two Scottish high-tensile fence builders in the countryside and "accidentally" killing people along the way by day and hitting the local pub at night. I have the book on reserve to read before the film comes out -- I like Mills's work but I've not read this one yet. If this film does well, perhaps it will be the beginning of a series of adaptations of Mills's books.
Next up for Whishaw is Brideshead Revisited, an adaptation of the classic Evelyn Waugh novel, in which Whishaw will play Sebastian Flyte, the younger son of an aristocratic family who befriends the protagonist, Charles Ryder. Ryder will be played by Matthew Goode, who was fantastic as the bad guy in the The Lookout opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt, so I'm really looking forward to seeing this one now (Goode, by the way, also has a role in the upcoming Watchmen, as Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias). Brideshead is being directed by Julian Jarrold, who previously directed Kinky Boots (which played at last year's Sundance) and Becoming Jane.

Last up up Whishaw's current "to-do" list is Bright Star, written and directed by Jane Campion, in which he'll play poet John Keats opposite Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne. This one will focus on Keats's romance with Brawne, which was cut short by the poet's tragically early death at the age of 25 (so bring a box of tissues to that one). Whishaw has just the right combination of dark moodiness and brooding good looks to play a poet, and Cornish is great in pretty much anything, so I'll be looking forward to this one as well. I'm a lit geek as well as a film geek, so I'm loving all these literary adaptations Whishaw has in the works. Looks like he's making some solid choices, now we'll just have to wait and see how the films come out.