Though he’s currently busy causing trouble for Christian Bale’s Batman as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, Tom Hardy is also thinking about future jobs. And one possibility has just arrived on the news radar, with word from Vulture that he’s apparently attached himself to Cicero, a story about the rise of Al Capone that has Harry Potter veteran director David Yates extremely interested.
Details on Cicero were first announced back when Warner Bros. other mobster-focused drama, The Gangster Squad, was first beginning to come together. The script has been adapted by Wild Bunch (yes, the Peckinpah one) writer Walon Green from his own unused TV pilot. The basic plot finds a young Capone making his way up the criminal hierarchy.
Warners is apparently considering this one as possibly launching a trilogy, one that follows Capone through his rise, along his reign and, ultimately to his downfall. Of course, everything is still at an early stage and neither Yates nor Hardy is locked in place yet. Hardy, you might recall, also has another job waiting for him – he’s set to play Mad Max in Fury Road for George Miller, with the director hoping to get started early next year.
Yet Cicero is just one of the projects that the studio is dangling in Yates’ face like someone trying to interest a kitten in string: clearly looking to hold on to the man who has helped make millions by shepherding the later Potter movies, executives are also high on the idea of a multi-film adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand.
Then there’s a film based on Vertigo Comics’ series Fables, which finds fairytale characters living in a section of New York called Fabletown. There, characters such as the Big Bad Wolf (a reformed carnivore) plod a police beat investigating murders among their community. Finally? We have Jonathan Tropper’s farcical novel,** This is Where I Leave You**.
From the looks of the list, and according to Vulture’s sources, it appears The Stand is the one with the most traction at Warners, but it will all depend on Yates’ choice. The chance to work with Hardy might prove an awfully powerful lure. We’d remind you, however, that everything is staying strictly in Rumour Central for now…