Michael Fassbender is in talks for Danny Boyle's Trances

Michael Fassbender is in negotiations to join Danny Boyle's upcoming thriller, Trances .

It was looking like Danny Boyle wouldn't be making another movie before staging the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games, but it seems the prolific director can't sit still.

Having recently directed Frankenstein for the National Theatre to great acclaim, Boyle has now set his sights on Trances , a remake of a British TV movie.

The plot sees an auction house assistant plan a high-value heist with a gang of professional thieves, only to suffer from an inconvenient bout of amnesia which leaves the stolen painting's location a mystery.

The gang gets unsurprisingly tetchy, and hires a hypnotist to get answers from the forgetful so-and-so.

Fassbender is apparently looking to play the gang's 'shady leader' according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The actor shares his workaholic inclinations with Boyle, having rarely slowed down since breaking out in 300 .

He'll next be seen in X-Men: First Class , and he also has Jane Eyre , David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method and Steve Hunger McQueen's Shame in the can.

Fassbender is currently shooting a role in Ridley Scott's sorta- Alien prequel Prometheus .

Boyle, who's producing with Christian Colson, plans to shoot Trances in the autumn, and edit it after his work on the Olympic ceremony.

Matt Maytum
Editor, Total Film

I'm the Editor at Total Film magazine, overseeing the running of the mag, and generally obsessing over all things Nolan, Kubrick and Pixar. Over the past decade I've worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at 12DOVE, and you can often hear me nattering on the Inside Total Film podcast. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.