He can currently be found on screen threatening Gotham City as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, but Tom Hardy will be indulging in a different kind of theatricality for a future role. Hardy is set to co-star with Michael Shannon in The Long Red Road.
So how does the theatre come into it? The movie will adapt Brett C Leonard’s play, originally staged at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, which saw Hardy playing Sam, an alcoholic try to drink his demons away on a Native American reservation in South Dakota.
But when his young daughter arrives for a visit in a desperate attempt to reconnect with him, Sam must take a tough look at what he’s become and decide what to do with his life.
Shannon, who wasn’t part of the original production’s cast, will play Sam’s older brother. Leonard is planning to write the film version himself and there’s no official word yet on a director. That said, Philip Seymour Hoffman filled that job for the play and already has one film, Jack Goes Boating, on his CV, so there’s a chance he’ll be offered the gig when the script is complete.