Images of Tom promoting Locke have been added to the gallery.
Tom confirmed he would attend the premiere of Locke at Cineworld on Wednesday, April 16.
Hollywood film star Tom Hardy has been confirmed as the special guest in Birmingham for the UK premiere of Locke, a new film directed by city-born Peaky Blinders’ creator Steven Knight.
Film Birmingham manager Sindy Campbell said: “We were delighted when Tom confirmed he would attend the premiere on Wednesday, April 16.
“Having Tom and Steven together will be a huge coup for the city.
“We’ve been working with Cineworld for some time to make Birmingham a destination for film premieres and this is confirmation that we are doing something right.”
Locke is the second film to have been directed by Knight, after the Jason Statham thriller Hummingbird last year.
Knight has also written Eastern Promises, Amazing Grace and was Oscar-nominated for his Dirty Pretty Things screenplay a decade ago.
The thriller begins with Ivan Locke driving away from Birmingham one night.
He has the perfect family, a dream job, and tomorrow should be a career highlight.
But one phone call will force him to make a decision that will put it all on the line…
London-born Hardy, 36, has previously starred in Christopher Nolan’s Inception and The Dark Knight Rises.
His other films include Lawless, Warrior and Bronson.
As well as starring in Knight’s own Peaky Blinders, he will play Max Rockatansky in Mad Max: Fury Road for 2015 release.
It’s the fourth instalment of the series which returning director George Miller launched with Mel Gibson in 1979.
Paul Millington, general manager of Cineworld Birmingham, added: “Birmingham is rapidly becoming a top UK city for film. We’re very excited to be hosting the UK premiere of Locke at what proves to be an exhilarating evening!”
Cineworld’s maketing vice president Justin Skinner added: “We’re pleased to show our support for this much anticipated, ingenious thriller.”
Lionsgate will release Locke in cinemas across the UK on April 18 – two days after the Birmingham premiere.
Tom Hardy is not a movie star.
This is not a judgment. Right now, at least, it is simply an observation, a statement of fact.
Tom Hardy is an English actor, London-born, thirty-six years old. He has been the star of—the lead and titular character in—two movies made in England, Bronson and the upcoming Locke. He has costarred in three American movies, Warrior, This Means War, and Lawless, alongside actors like Joel Edgerton, Chris Pine, and Shia LaBeouf. He also has been directed by Christopher Nolan in two movies of global prominence, Inception and The Dark Knight Rises. In Inception, he is a member of Leonardo DiCaprio’s supporting cast, part of an ensemble, billed beneath Joseph Gordon-Levitt and called upon to lend the proceedings a kind of amoral integrity. In The Dark Knight Rises, he plays Bane, the supervillain set in opposition to Christian Bale’s Batman, with a shaved head, thirty pounds of added muscle, a mask of rubber and steel fitted over his nose and mouth, and an accent—a voice—intense in its artificiality, its almost Elizabethan resonance, and its menace.
To the extent that American audiences know Tom Hardy, they know him as Bane.
Next year, they will know him—or not—as the new Mad Max, in George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, with Charlize Theron.
Is Tom Hardy a movie star? The only conclusive answer is that we won’t know until the summer of 2015, when Warner Bros. finally releases Mad Max and the first weekend’s returns are in.
But that does not stop the question from being asked. Indeed, the question of whether a particular actor is a movie star is, in Hollywood, a philosophical one, almost an epistemological one, a matter of chemistry devoid of science. As much as it is in the business of making movies, Hollywood is in the business of finding movie stars, and as bad as Hollywood is—as low as its percentages are—at predicting what movies might be hits, it is even worse at determining which actors are destined for stardom. In truth, the number of actors who can, in industry parlance, “open a movie” is not just small; it’s unchanging. There are about a dozen of them in all, and an entire industry is built around their care and cultivation.
Tom Hardy is not one of them. He is not even like them.
He says things movie stars would never say and does things movie stars would never do.
He admits to saying things they would never say and doing things they would never do.
There are stories about him saying things they would never say and doing things they would never do.
And so, there is not only the usual element of uncertainty about the question of whether Tom Hardy will become what Warner Bros., among many others, is betting on him to become.
There is also an element of something Hollywood hasn’t seen in a long time—danger.
Which is the reason people think he’s going to be a movie star in the first place.
And which is the reason they also think he can still fuck it up.
Actor Tom Hardy is joining forces with Sir Ridley Scott for a BBC One period drama about the East India Company.
The eight-part series, Taboo, will star Hardy as a rogue adventurer who sets out to build a shipping empire, pitting him against the East India Company.
Inception star Hardy, who wrote the original story with his father Chips, called it “a flagship British drama for this generation”.
Gladiator director Sir Ridley said Hardy’s character “will become iconic”.
“This is a period in British history where the rising power of the Empire seeped into every dark corner,” said Sir Ridley, best known for cult films such as Alien and Blade Runner, who will produce the drama.
The drama, set in 1813, will reunite Hardy with screenwriter Steven Knight, with whom he worked on the forthcoming film Locke.
Knight is also the writer of BBC gangster drama Peaky Blinders, which Hardy is joining for its second series this autumn.
Knight described the lead character, James Delaney, as “a deeply flawed and deeply troubled human being”.
“His greatest struggle will be against the East India Company which, throughout the 19th Century, was the equivalent of the CIA, the NSA and the biggest, baddest multinational corporation on earth, all rolled into one self-righteous, religiously motivated monolith.”
Ben Stephenson, controller of BBC drama commissioning, said he was “thrilled” to see Hardy and Knight reunited on the series.
“This is a major and ambitious undertaking for the BBC, reinforcing our commitment to be the best home for creative talent.”
Villainous
Tom Hardy’s company, Hardy Son & Baker, will co-produce the series with Scott’s Scott Free London. Shooting will begin in early 2015.
Hardy, who became a well-known name following his villainous turn as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, can shortly be seen in James Gandolfini’s final film The Drop.
He is also lined up to play the lead in the forthcoming Mad Max reboot, as well as playing Elton John in the Rocketman biopic.
The actor is reported to be starring in the National Theatre’s film adaptation of London Road, alongside Broadchurch star Olivia Colman.
London Road was inspired by the murders committed by Ipswich serial killer Steve Wright, who was found guilty in February 2008 of murdering five women working as prostitutes.
Images of Tom attending the 2014 EE British Academy Film Awards in London tonight have been added to the gallery. View them here.
Here is the poster for Locke advertising the release date as 18th April 2014.
Tom Hardy has signed up to appear in the second series of BBC Two gangster series Peaky Blinders.
The English actor, whose movie credits include The Dark Knight Rises, Bronson and Inception, will play a “charismatic leader” who offers a deal to the show’s leading character Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy).
Hardy’s casting was announced on the show’s Facebook and Twitter pages today (February 14) as a special treat for fans.
Peaky Blinders’ first series was critically-acclaimed and featured in Digital Spy’s Top 25 TV Shows of 2013 list.
Starring Murphy, Sam Neill and Helen McCroy, it is an epic family gangster saga based in 1919 Birmingham.
The announcement was made on the show’s Facebook and Twitter pages
The show is directed by Steven Knight, who recently teamed up with Hardy on the movie Locke.
Hardy and Cillian Murphy previously starred together in The Dark Knight Rises as Bane and Dr. Jonathan Crane.
Peaky Blinders’ second series will air in the UK at the end of the year.