Anyone who's heard 30 Odd Foot Of Grunt - and there are a few of you out there - will know that Russell Crowe is a man who takes his music seriously. Robin Hood may have been lighter than hoped on the campfire hey-nonny-nonnying, but the actor is getting the chance to add his five-foot-and-11-inches of vocal grunt to Tom Hooper's big screen version of Les Miserables.
Crowe will be exercising those vocal chords as Inspector Javert. He's* le bad guy*, the heartless gendarme who relentlessly pursues Hugh Jackman's poverty-stricken Jean Valjean when the latter is paroled from prison after serving 20 years for stealing bread to feed his starving family. Javert is convinced that you're once a thief, always a thief, and so when Valjean disappears and tries to rebuild his life, Javert is determined to track him down. After Robin Hood, it looks like a classic case of 'poacher turned bastard'.
Crowe joins a cast that already boosts Jackman and may soon have Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter and Geoffrey Rush scaling its proverbial rampants. Hathaway, another with a larynx to soothe the angels, is reportedly in talks to play Fantine, a struggling Parisian who sells her body to look after her child.
Les Miserables is scheduled for release on December 7, 2012.