That Tom Hardy is one cool cat. Smooth, suave and always entertaining.
He's also an incredible chameleon. His larger-than-life role as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises is unrecognizable in his world-weary, barely-speaking part as the title character in Mad Max: Fury Road. He recently had the opportunity to shape-shift once again as Rick Flagg in the DC Comics-based movie Suicide Squad but had to bow out of that opportunity (Joel Kinnaman replaced him) due to scheduling conflicts.
In a new interview with Collider, Hardy says he's still interested in working on comic book movies — and might just have one up his sleeve. Although the actor is intentionally vague, he drops several hints.
First, he says that it's a DC movie. Not surprising, since he has a history of successful films at Warner Bros., and studios these days like to hold onto their actors. DC has a ton of movies already scheduled up through 2020 or so, but Hardy's comments suggest that the project he's talking about here isn't any of those. Couple that with recent rumors that Warner Bros. may have a slate of Vertigo Comics (an adult imprint of DC) movies in the works, and it narrows down the possibilities considerably.
"It contains elements of all kinds of stuff," Hardy said, commenting on the title's genre and tone. "From Ocean's Eleven to Batman, you can get all the wrappers out and it would be a big, really cool, Technicolor, Pulp Fiction... It's a psychological f*ckfest." He then name-dropped Transmetropolitan as an example of the project's style, before quickly pointing out that it's not Transmetropolitan, that it's something "much more real world. It could be like Heat."
Just when you think it can't get any juicier, Hardy throws one last curveball. When the interviewer asks about DC's movie slate, his response is a shocker.
"It's not even a movie," he says. "It's real estate. It's prime real estate which is sitting right there under everybody's nose that no one's really thought about yet, and it goes TV and movie. I can't believe that nobody has even [thought of it yet]."
Boom.
So we have what's very probably a Vertigo Comic being adapted for live action. Something set in the "real world" but with a big psychological component. Something that can bend to fit multiple genres with similarities to Transmetropolitan and Heat. And it's big. Big enough that it could give rise to both a movie (or movies) and a TV show, both. (Maybe similar to that plan for The Dark Tower that Ron Howard was kicking around a while back.) So we're talking about an ongoing saga of some kind.
Our best guess? Either Fables or Planetary.
What do you think?
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