Christian Bale & Hugh Jackman: Magicians???

Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman are in final negotiations to star in Touchstone Pictures' The Prestige, which will serve as Christopher Nolan's next directorial project. Prestige will re-team Bale and Nolan, both of whom worked together on Batman Begins.

Bale and Jackman will play rival magicians in turn-of-the-century London who battle each other for trade secrets. The rivalry is so intense that it turns them into murderers. The title refers to the residue left after a magician's successful trick.

The script is based on Christopher Priest's 1996 novel of the same name and was adapted by Nolan's brother, Jonathan. He has another script in the works, The Exec, to also be directed by his brother Christopher, but we haven't seen anything on the silver screen by him yet, even though he did write the short story that Christopher's Memento was based on.

This should be a great project for both Bale and Jackman, it will be interesting to see how these two great actors play off each other as competing "men of magic."