Tom Hardy Loads Up ‘100 Bullets’ Movie Adaptation
Tom Hardy digs DC Comics. He was Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, and he was supposed to star in Suicide Squad until scheduling conflicts with The Revenant forced him out of the project (Hardy said he was “gutted” to lose the gig). In May, we got word that Hardy was also developing another DC project, though he wouldn’t say just what it was. Here’s how he described it at the time:
It contains elements of all kinds of stuff. From Ocean's Eleven, to Batman, you can get all the wrappers out and it would be a big, really cool, technicolor Pulp Fiction. It's a psychological f---fest, it's absolutely awesome ... It's something which is much more real world. It could be like Heat, it could be f---ing awesome.
It took a few months for this mystery project to be revealed, but here it is, courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter: 100 Bullets, a long-running and critically acclaimed comics series created by writer Brian Azzarello and artist Eduardo Risso for DC’s adult imprint Vertigo. I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as Batman-meets-Ocean’s 11, but there are elements of both concepts in the series. Here’s how THR describes it:
Running for 100 issues from 1999 to 2009, the acclaimed comic centered on an enigmatic man named Agent Graves as he presents different people, for reasons unknown, with a gun, the identity of the person who ruined their lives … and a hundred rounds of untraceable ammunition ... The plot for movie is being kept locked in a briefcase but insiders say the plan is to stay true to the comic.
100 Bullets was sort of an anthology that slowly revealed a larger mythology and serialized story about Graves’ background and motivations. It always struck me as a better fit for a TV series than a movie, and for a while that’s where it was being developed; as a project by Dark Knight co-writer David Goyer. Now it’s been shifted to New Line as part of their lineup of Vertigo-based movies, which already includes Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Sandman movie. The project’s script is by Chris Borrelli, writer of the recent horror film The Vatican Tapes.
At the moment, THR says Hardy is only committed to producing 100 Bullets “with an eye to star.” Should Hardy decide to act in the film as well (as Agent Graves or another character), 100 Bullets would certainly fit nicely into his growing portfolio of gritty action and crime movies (including The Drop, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Lawless, just to name a few) — and, of course, DC comics properties.