Here's something we know about Tom Hardy: he's a total comic book fanboy. Straight up. How do we know? It has nothing to do with him playing Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. We know it because he just referenced Warren Ellis' influential DC comic Transmetropolitan in a interview with Collider. Hardy, who very nearly starred in Warner Bros.' Suicide Squad film, revealed that he's got another DC Comics property with the studio on the way, and his excitement for it is clearly off the charts...
Hardy: "It’s really good actually, 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 fuckfest, it’s absolutely awesome. It’s as if you would take Transmetropolitan and make it happen, but it’s not that out there it’s something which is much more real world. It could be like Heat, it could be fucking awesome. Let me tell you what it is, try and guess."Wait, what? So why isn't it just Transmetropolitan? That would be amazing! Unfortunately, that's not it. So what is it?
Hardy: "It’s not even a movie.....It’s real estate, it’s PRIME real estate which is sitting there right under everybody’s nose that no one’s really thought about yet and it goes TV and movie, it’s awesome. I can’t believe that nobody has even –I know they thought of it but no one has actually blown life into it yet."
My hope is that he's talking about something like Hitman, which combines the gritty world of underground crime with bonkers superhero satire with many of DC's biggest characters appearing. What it sounds like is a Dark Tower-situation combining film and television, but that doesn't give us an idea of the actual property. Damn you, Hardy! Spill!
Hardy has found a comfortable spot with Warner Bros. where he's done The Dark Knight Rises, Inception, and Mad Max: Fury Road, so he was upset when the whole Suicide Squad thing fell through. While there have been a number of reasons given why he had to drop out, Hardy chalks it up to plain old scheduling conflicts. He's been busy shooting Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's The Revenant which has gone long in production...
Hardy: “There’s a very practical element as to why I’ve missed out on that foray, which is because Alejandro [G. Inarritu] has overshot by three months in Calgary, so we’ve got to go back out to Patagonia or Alaska to continue shooting The Revenant which has turned into a much bigger beast than we thought, but that also looks exceptional.”
He's still really pumped for how Suicide Squad will turn out, though, saying his replacement Joel Kinnaman will do "an amazing job" as Rick Flag.
Hardy: “Warner Bros. is my home studio and I love them so I was really bummed out. I wanted to work on that and I know the script is really fucking alley and I also know what’s gonna happen with The Joker and Harley Quinn in that; I won’t give away too much…it’s fucking alley. And that whole territory is something that I would certainly—I mean, everybody loves The Joker. Everybody loves The Joker. Will Smith is a dope guy, but everybody loves The Joker and that’s gonna, I think, be a very important film for fans.”
Finally, Hardy's tastes step beyond DC Comics and into the "distinguished competition" over at Marvel. He recently expressed an interest in playing The Punisher, who has been the subject of rumors about a possible Netflix series at some point...Hardy: “I want The Punisher… I want The Punisher, or Splinter Cell, I want something…I don’t know what I want....I’m not big enough to be The Punisher, I’m 5’9”.
Height didn't prevent Hugh Jackman from playing Wolverine, and it didn't prevent Tom Cruise from being Jack Reacher. The Punisher has been played previously by Thomas Jane and Ray Stevenson; neither film performed very well but with the character back in Marvel control it could get a new lease on life, especially if it starred Hardy. He's already set to play Sam Fisher in a Splinter Cell film which may shoot later this year.
