Tom Hardy has taken aim at New Line Cinema’s adaptation of the classic Vertigo/DC Comics series 100 Bullets. The star of Mad Max: Fury Road has signed on to produce the film alongside his Hardy Son & Baker partner Dean Baker, with an eye towards potentially starring in the movie himself.
The announcement is the first big move New Line has made since acquiring the responsibility for adaptations of DC’s Vertigo line of comics from Warner Bros. back in June. (Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s big screen version of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman was already well into development at the time.) The Vertigo books feature more creator-driven, edgier stories outside of the main DC superhero genre, which Warner Bros. still handles with the likes of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad.
A hard-hitting crime drama, 100 Bullets focuses on Agent Graves, an enigmatic man who tracks various individuals to present them with a gun, the name of a person who destroyed their lives, and 100 rounds of untraceable ammunition. Created by acclaimed comic writer Brian Azzarello and artist Eduardo Risso, the Eisner and Harvey Award-winning series ran for a very intentional 100 issues between 1999 and 2009.
Chris Borrelli (The Vatican Tapes) had already handed WB a script before New Line took over. DC producers Geoff Johns and Adam Schlagman are also onboard, as are Richard Brener, Walter Hamada and Dave Neustadter from New Line.
