John Hillcoat’s Prohibition-era drama stars Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Jason Clarke and Jessica Chastain.

The Weinstein Co.’s Lawless debuted to $1.14 million on Wednesday, placing No. 1 and earning a solid B+ CinemaScore from audiences.

Directed by John Hillcoat (The Proposition, The Road), the Prohibition-era drama sports a star-heavy cast led by Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Guy Pearce and Mia Wasikowska.

The film, set in rural Virginia, is based on Max Bondurant’s best-selling book The Wettest County in the World, which follows three brothers caught up in the moonshine business. The novel is based on Bondurant’s grandfather and two brothers.

Lucy Fisher and Doug Wick produced the movie, which made its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

The film skewed slightly male on Wednesday (54 percent), while 33 percent of the audience was younger than 25.

By opening Lawless on Wednesday, The Weinstein Co. hopes to build good word-of-mouth heading into the long Labor Day weekend.

Coming in No. 2 on Wednesday was Lionsgate and Millennium Films’ The Expendables 2, grossing $1.05 million for a domestic total of $56.3 million.

The anti-Barack Obama documentary 2016: Obama’s America continued to make headlines, placing No. 3 with an estimated $818,000 from 1,091 theaters for a cume of $12.4 million. By Friday, the film is expected to be playing in more than 1,700 theaters.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Tom Hardy are teaming up to produce an untitled animal-trafficking drama set up at Warner Bros., sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.

Hardy came up with the idea, inspired by friends who are former Special Forces operatives and went on to become anti-poaching fighters in South Africa and other nations.

The goal, say sources, is to make a movie in the vein of Traffic, Steven Soderbergh’s multistory take on the various impacts of the war on drugs. In this case, the story would look at everything from the ground war on poachers in the African savanna to how animal material ends up in the fashion houses of Paris. It’s unclear whether DiCaprio, Maguire or Hardy would act in the movie.

A search for a writer has begun.

DiCaprio and Maguire are lifelong pals but rarely have worked together, though both are starring in The Great Gatsby for Warners, which is set for release in summer 2013.

DiCaprio also is longtime animal-rights activist. Last year, he became the spokesman for a campaign to protect elephants organized by the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Hardy is one of the studio’s new favorite actors, coming off his notable appearances in The Dark Knight Rises and Inception (alongside DiCaprio). Hardy is starting to become active as a producer, having recently set up an untitled biker project at Warner Bros.

DiCaprio is repped by LBI Entertainment and Hansen Jacobson. Maguire is repped by WME, Management 360 and Hansen Jacobson. Hardy is repped by CAA, Sloane Offer and the U.K.’s United Agents.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Tom Hardy has said that he was intrigued by his Lawless character.

The actor explained that it was an acting challenge to bring humanity to Lawless’s bootlegger Forrest Bondurant, who swings between childlike kindness and violently aggressive behaviour.

“I take characters as they come, characters that interest me, that have scope. And also, a diversity of different ranges and colours and characteristics that are interesting in finding paradoxes and dichotomies of man,” Hardy said, reports Flicks and Bits.

Hardy continued: “[With Forrest, I was] like, ‘How can somebody be so violent, yet at the same time be such a little boy?’ Someone intrinsically innocent and naive and have such a heart, but then he’d do something on the other side that was so incredibly, horrifically horrible.

“And yet where the fulcrum is in the middle, someone that by the end of the film I want the audience to have the ability to care about that person.”

The film’s director John Hillcoat recently revealed that he was left “awestruck” by Hardy and also praised the actor’s chemistry with co-star Shia LaBeouf.

Source: Digital Spy

Acclaimed director John Hillcoat (The Road, The Proposition) delivers a thrillingly vivid slice of American outlaw history in his epic gangster tale, ‘Lawless.’ ‘Lawless’ is the true story of the infamous Bondurant Brothers: three bootlegging siblings who made a run for the American Dream in Prohibition-era Virginia. Based on author Matt Bondurant’s fictionalized account of his family, “The Wettest County in the World,” the film gathers an ensemble of gifted, dynamic new-generation stars – Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Mia Wasikowska, Dane DeHaan – alongside two of the finest actors of their generations, Guy Pearce and Gary Oldman. A riveting, intense story of crime and corruption, loyalty and love, brutality and tenderness, ‘Lawless’ is a rich addition to the American gangster canon. Look out for the film in cinemas August 29th in the US and September 7th in the UK.

Source: Flicks and Bits

Tom Hardy is set to reprise his role as Sam in a film adaptation of Brett C. Leonard’s play The Long Red Road.

The Dark Knight Rises actor – who starred in the play when it premiered at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago 2010 – will star alongside Boardwalk Empire’s Michael Shannon as his older brother, Variety reports.

The play follows Sam as he attempts to drink away his demons on an Indian reservation in South Dakota. When a visitor from his past arrives, Sam is forced to take a long hard look at himself and his former life.

Philip Seymour Hoffman directed the play when it ran in Chicago in 2010. It is not known if he will direct the production for the big screen

The film will be the first feature from Whipsmart, Paul Neesan’s new production company.

Source: Belfast Telegraph

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