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Tom Hardy, Solar Pictures Tackle Post Traumatic Stress Disorder With ‘Samarkand’

Tom Hardy has teamed with Solar Pictures to develop Samarkand, a drama that will be directed by Greg Williams and tackles the topical hot button issue of post traumatic stress disorder.

Hardy will portray an SAS soldier returning from operations in the Middle East. Suffering from PTSD, he has a most difficult time reintegrating from the battlefield back into society. The script was written by Greg and Olly Williams, brothers who developed the picture with Hardy and Solar Pictures’ Bobby Paunescu.

Williams, a celebrated photographer, makes this his feature debut. His 2011 short film Sergeant Slaughter, My Big Brother starred Hardy and it won Williams Best Director honors at the New York, Chicago and San Francisco Short Film Festivals.

Hardy is attached to the Steven Knight-directed Locke, the Daniel Espinosa-directed Child 44, and the Doug Liman-directed Everest. He’ll next star with Noomi Rapace in an adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s Animal Rescue for Fox Searchlight, with Michael R. Roskam directing. He’s repped by CAA.

Source: Deadline.com

Tom Hardy Has The Keys To Locke

Steven Knight’s real-time thriller

With his days as Gotham’s reckoning behind him, Tom Hardy his loading his schedule with new movies that don’t require him to take out American Football stadiums. But even with several films now in development, he’s got room for more, adding a starring role in Steven Knight’s Locke to his to-do list.

Knight, who wrote Dirty Pretty Things, Amazing Grace, Eastern Promises and recently turned director for his thriller script Hummingbird, is back in the big folding chair for this one.

Locke finds Hardy as Ivan Locke, a man who finds his seemingly perfect life unravelling during a tension-filled 90-minute race against the clock, which will apparently be shot to take place in real time.

With shooting set to start later this month in London, Knight and backers IM Global are headed to Berlin this week to sell the rights at the European Film Market. And this being a film for sale, there’s naturally a supportive press release to go along with it. “I’m really excited to be working with Tom Hardy on an innovative piece of filmmaking which will exercise his immense talent to the full,” Knight says in a statement picked up by the Hollywood Reporter. We’re just hoping they can make it work more skilfully than Johnny Depp thriller Nick Of Time or Al Pacino dud 88 Minutes.

Hardy has finally finished work on the exhaustive Mad Max: Fury Road shoot and is also scheduled to film Animal Rescue alongside Noomi Rapace. Sounds like Locke will fit in before everything else he has planed…

Source: Empire Online

Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace in Talks for ‘Child 44’

Daniel Espinosa is directing the Ridley Scott-produced, Soviet Union-set thriller.

Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace are in negotiations to team up to star in Child 44, a Soviet-era thriller being produced by Ridley Scott and Michael Costigan.

Daniel Espinosa is directing the thriller, which is set in the 1950s and follows a member of the Soviet police who, while investigating a series of child murders, finds himself the target of his own government’s suspicions.

Hardy will play the Soviet officer while Rapace will play his wife, who pretends to be doting partner but is concealing many thoughts and feelings.

Richard Price wrote the script adapting the Tom Rob Smith novel.

Hardy (CAA, Sloane Offer, and UK’s United Agents) starred as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises while Rapace (UTA, Magnolia Entertainment) and was the lead in Scott’s giant sci-fi movie Prometheus.

The two will first work together on Fox Searchlight’s drama Animal Rescue, which is due to shoot in March before segueing to Child 44, which is eyeing a start in Budapest towards the end of May.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Noomi Rapace set for ‘Animal Rescue’

Actress to play female lead opposite Tom Hardy in Michael Roskam drama

Shortly before Christmas, Fox Searchlight offered Noomi Rapace the female lead opposite Tom Hardy in Michael Roskam’s drama “Animal Rescue” and Variety has learned that the “Prometheus” star has accepted the role and closed her deal.

Chernin Entertainment and Mike Larocca are producing the pic, which author Dennis Lehane adapted from his own short story that first appeared in “Boston Noir.”

Production is skedded to begin this spring in New York, where Fox Searchlight is relocating the story rather than film in Massachusetts, where Lehane adaptations “Mystic River,” “Shutter Island” and “Gone Baby Gone” all took place.

Hardy stars as a man looking to reform his criminal ways who gets mixed up in a bad heist and a killing resulting from a lost and contested pit bull. Rapace will play Nadia, a woman with a scar across her entire neck who crosses paths with the protag when he finds a wounded puppy outside her home.

Rapace had been looking for a chance to work with Hardy, as the duo were also considering working together on Scott Free’s long-gestating project “Child 44.”

Rapace, who recently starred in Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” and Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” will next be seen opposite Colin Farrell in “Dead Man Down,” which reteams the original “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” star with helmer Niels Arden Oplev. She also stars opposite Rachel McAdams in Brian De Palma’s thriller “Passion.”

Rapace is repped by UTA and Magnolia Entertainment.

Rapace most recently starred in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and the Brian DePalma-directed Passion, latter of which made its debut at the New York Film Festival. Hardy’s repped by CAA, Rapace and Roskam by UTA, with Rapace managed by Magnolia Entertainment and Roskam by Anonymous Content.
Source: Variety

DVD reviews: Friday, January 18: Lawless

Rick Fulton reviews the best of the DVDs released this week including Lawless starring Batman baddie Tom Hardy.

LAWLESS (18) ****

BATMAN baddie Tom Hardy stars with Shia LaBeouf as bootleg booze brothers in early 1930s Virginia.

Adapted from Matt Bondurant’s novel The Wettest County In The World, Lawless is a Prohibition-era thriller that pulls few punches in its depiction of the violence meted out by law-makers and law-breakers.

Hardy plays Forrest Bondurant, and his brothers Howard (Jason Clarke) and Jack (LaBeouf) bootleg booze in the mountains of Franklin County.

They run a successful bar and eke out a living by trading moonshine, made at secret distilleries maintained by Jack’s disabled pal Cricket (Dane DeHaan).

The siblings’ business empire threatens to crumble to its foundations when sadistic Special Deputy Charley Rakes (Guy Pearce) arrives from Chicago on a mission to shut down the distilleries at the behest of District Attorney Mason Wardell (Tim Tolin). 

As young love blossoms between Jack and preacher’s daughter Bertha Minnix (Mia Wasikowska), Rakes sets about dismantling the brothers’ operation, targeting dancer-turned-waitress Maggie (Jessica Chastain).

Yet, for all its dramatic simplicity, John Hillcoat’s film packs a hefty punch.

Hardy delivers a brooding performance, maintaining his stoic hard-man image
around Chastain’s emotionally battered love interest.

But it’s Pearce who scorches every mud and blood-smeared frame as an obsessive-compulsive bully hiding behind his badge.

Also available to buy on DVD £17.99/Blu-ray £19.99

Source: Daily Record

Tom Hardy & Noomi Rapace In Talks For Fox Searchlight’s ‘Animal Rescue’

Fox Searchlight is in final talks with Tom Hardy to star in Animal Rescue, and has offered the female lead to Noomi Rapace. Searchlight is eyeing a March start date in New York for a film that was scripted by Gone Baby Gone author Dennis Lehane from a short story first published in the collection Boston Noir. Animal Rescue will be directed by Michael R. Roskam, whose breakout film Bullhead was a nominee for Best Foreign Language film last year. He was set earlier this fall. Chernin Entertainment is producing.

The drama focuses on a man who wants to shed his criminal path but somehow gets mixed up in a bad heist and a killing resulting from a lost and contested pit bull. As he has done with all his books, Lehane set the short story in the outskirts of Boston. But so many movies have been set there lately–including his Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone and Shutter Island–that they’ve relocated the action to New York. The project originated at Fox 2000, but later moved over to Searchlight, and numerous pedigreed directors have circled it over the past two years. Hardy sparked to the chance to create the character and work with a director whose film he admired.

It’ll be next for Hardy, who has other projects lined up for later. They include Splinter Cell at New Regency; he is producing with Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio two separate projects at Warner Bros on the poaching of wild animals. Hardy is attached to star in one of them: a Sheldon Turner-scripted drama in which Hardy will play a former Special Forces soldier who signs on with a friend to work in the bush, training rangers to fight off the poachers decimating the rhino and elephant populations in Zimbabwe. The second film is a Traffic-like dissection of the trafficking industry that exploits the global market for illicit parts from slain animals that are used as aphrodisiacs and other ridiculous purposes. This film might involve Maguire, DiCaprio and Hardy in onscreen roles. Hardy is separately attached to play fabled British climber George Mallory and his quest to become the first man to scale Mt. Everest. That film, Everest, will be directed by Doug Liman at Sony. All this action comes after Hardy played Bane in The Dark Knight Rises and completing Mad Max: Fury Road, and it’s what happens when Hollywood decides you’re the next big star.

Rapace most recently starred in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and the Brian DePalma-directed Passion, latter of which made its debut at the New York Film Festival. Hardy’s repped by CAA, Rapace and Roskam by UTA, with Rapace managed by Magnolia Entertainment and Roskam by Anonymous Content.

Source

Splinter Cell with Tom Hardy Moves Forward

New Regency has come on board to produce the action thriller Splinter Cell along with Ubisoft®. Tom Hardy is confirmed to star in the project which will be scripted by Eric Warren Singer (The International).

“With actor Tom Hardy attached and screenwriter Eric Warren Singer to write the script, Ubisoft Motion Pictures will lead the development with the support of New Regency to bring the franchise to the big screen in a dynamic way,” stated Jean-Julien Baronnet, chief executive officer, Ubisoft Motion Pictures, in the official announcement. “For Ubisoft Motion Pictures, creative control is key and New Regency shares our commitment to respecting the creative freedom of our team. Their ability to produce both blockbusters and intriguing indie hits is an ideal fit for the Splinter Cell franchise.”

New Regency CEO and President Brad Weston said, “We could not be happier to be teaming up with our friends at Ubisoft Motion Pictures on yet another truly iconic title. With a movie star like Tom Hardy in place and a gifted writer such as Eric Warren Singer penning the screenplay, we know the fans will not be let down.”

The synopsis for those who don’t play the video game: “Splinter Cell follows protagonist Sam Fisher, a highly-trained special operative in a fictional black-ops sub-division, ‘Echelon’. Sam Fisher and the agents of Echelon utilize combat skills, weapons and cutting-edge gadgets to neutralize international terrorist threats and rogue forces in modern, realistic stories ripped from the headlines.”

This year, Hardy was seen on the big screen playing Bane in The Dark Knight Rises and the head of a bootlegging family in Lawless. He recently wrapped up work on Mad Max: Fury Road written and directed by George Miller.

Source: About.com