Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace must be really confident they can work well together. Although they’ve only just signed on to co-star in Animal Rescue, they’re already lining up a second collaboration, entering negotiations for Daniel Espinosa’s Child 44. Adapted from Tom Rob Smith’s novel by Richard Price (and in development since 2008), Child 44’s plot focuses on Leo Demidov, a disgraced officer in Russia’s secret police framed for treason by a colleague in the 1950s. Despite that pressure, he also gets mixed up investigating a series of gruesome child murders. Espinosa, who last made Safe House, has been attached to direct the film for Lionsgate/Summit (which plucked the project from turnaround) since last August. Hardy is in line to play the officer, while Rapace would be his wife – a woman who, while she seems to be a doting partner, is in fact hiding a wealth of conflicted feelings. Animal Rescue, which boasts Michael R Roskam directing, is set to kick off shooting in March, followed by a trip to Budapest for the Child 44 shoot, which is currently pencilled in for late May. | 
