Since he broke out with Chronicle back in 2012, director Josh Trank has not, it can be said, enjoyed the best luck with his career. His updated version of Fantastic Four crashed and burned with critics and audiences and that flame-out, plus reports of off-set issues and his aggressively frank social media presence at the time, saw him ditched from a planned Star Wars stand-alone. Things appeared to be looking up for him when he shot an Al Capone biopic with Tom Hardy playing the infamous mobster, but now here comes the Coronavirus, pushing the film to a home entertainment debut.
Once titled Fonzo (a riff on Capone's full first name, Alphonse), it'll now be called Capone. And, in the States at least, the film has a new distributor and will be headed to streaming via Vertical Entertainment. The news arrives via Film Ratings' twitter feed, and was spotted byThe Playlist.
Capone finds Hardy as the mobster at age 47, when he was released from prison and suffered a whole host of health issues: late-stage syphilis, a stroke and pneumonia, to name but a few. The infamous bootlegger and gang boss died aged 48, so expect this to be a more meditative look at Capone’s final year rather than a boisterous depiction of him in his prime.
How this affects the film's release in the UK (which had yet to be decided) remains to be seen. The trailer for movie is now online, and you can watch it below.
In the States, the film will initially be released as a home premiere VOD release on May 12th with an on-demand 48-hour rental, via Vertical and Redbox. And there's still hope for a theatrical release later in the summer.