Michael Fassbender’s career is moving along quite nicely these days.  He’s got two highly anticipated movies set for release in October, The Counselor and 12 Years a Slave, and Oscar chatter is pretty decent for both of them.

Last week he was cast in a new film adaptation of Macbeth, which is due to start filming in the U.K. in January. Playing opposite as Lady Macbeth will be Oscar winner Marion Cotillard, who was just announced as Natalie Portman’s replacement.  The crew behind the Academy Award winning The Kings Speech a few years back is also producing Macbeth, so a quality film can definitely be expected.

Will Fassbender go from Shakespeare to mommy porn? The film version of the wildly popular Fifty Shades of Grey books should announce casting any time now as a release date has been tentatively announced for next summer.

Fassbender, raised in Co. Kerry, gets high praise from a number of sites as a potentially perfect Christian Grey, the main character in the books.

“Fassbender would be perfect in the role of Christian Grey. Though he doesn't have 'pretty boy' looks like [Ryan] Gosling does, Fassbender has proved himself with edgier and more intense roles such as Shame, where the actor performed several frontal nude and sexually explicit scenes,” one site commented.