Tom & John Hillcoat together again?
Director John Hillcoat’s next film is apparently called 999 (or Triple Nine) and according to a leaked document concerning the sales and status of a lot of forthcoming films, Tom is part of the cast. Or considered for the cast, I don’t know. The leak is mentioned here, so it’s real, but might be out of date (seems it might be from Jan-Feb). Still, Tom & Benicio del Toro sounds brilliant.
999
Director: JOHN HILLCOAT
ACTIVE HIGH-PRIORITY
Cast: Tom Hardy, Benicio del Toro, maybe Chris Hemsworth
The story line has been described by Mr Hillcoat in two different ways:
1. It revolves around a family of Jewish Russian mobsters, where the real power resides in the hands of a woman whose partner is imprisoned in a Russian gulag. Hillcoat describes it as a contemporary look at “where criminals are at right now, from the Jewish Russian mob to the cartels in the street.”
2. Triple Nine is financed and we’re trying to put a cast together, but it’s very ambitious and it’s a big ensemble. Trying to work with people’s schedules is exponentially harder than with your typical two-hander. It’s a contemporary crime thriller that looks at the crime landscape from the top right down to the bottom.
[I suggest it might be a little like Traffic] A little bit like Traffic, though that was specific to the parallel story between Mexico and the impact in America. And that was focusing in on two individuals and Triple Nine does not, it’s more of a tapestry. There is a protagonist, though the lines are blurred.
Of course, with Tom’s busy schedule, I have no clue when this would happen…
(Source: stohl.de)
![There is no shortage of talent in this film. What can you tell us about the cast and what they brought to the table to bring the whole thing to life?
That is a big question! I was totally thrilled with the cast that we got and each of them brought something very special. With Mia [Wasikowska], in addition to being a great actress has a wonderful face of that time and world of a secluded religious community of the South — there is a real innocence there. Shia LaBeouf was the first one aboard. He was so brimming and enthusiastic. Much like the character, he wanted everything at once and couldn’t sit still! There was that quality in the character of Jack that I think translated really well. Jessica [Chastain] and Tom [Hardy] have this beautiful complicated relationship, like they are two damaged souls coming together. They are so brilliant at exploring their vulnerable sides. Jason Clarke has a real physicality to everything he does, whereas Tom had a very distilled manner. There were points where he wouldn’t say and do anything for so long. We all looked at each other and realized that he brought this incredible distillation into the process. He also brought the idea of the matriarch and ran with in an audacious way. It was brilliant, the idea of this mother hen protecting the coop. Dane Dehaan had such a superb, youthful innocence and vulnerability that was quite heartbreaking. Gary [Oldman] and Guy [Pearce] had the courage to really let loose with this and do things they had never done before. Guy works from the outside in, so the outrageous choices of dress and hair started to come forward from Guy very early on. Of course, Gary is the ultimate chameleon. Together, they personified the outrageousness of Chicago in that era, the larger than life Jimmy Cagney types. We had a terrific cast and I could go on and on. All of these people were quite impressive. They are from all around the world and came together to form a very close-knit, small community for the film. That was quite an impressive feat.
- John Hillcoat on the beauitfully talented cast of Lawless, one of my favourite casts ever - can’t be said enough times.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_melyw1m9x61qe5f96o1_500.jpg)
![Two quotes from John Hillcoat and Nick Cave on Tom Hardy’s Forrest in Lawless:
Hillcoat:
“Actually Tom brought a lot to that,” Hillcoat praised his star. “He made some audacious choices that really paid off. I mean he’s a really bold actor in that sense. He takes serious risks which I greatly admire and we always loved the idea of him exploring other sides. He’s not just this hard, haunted character, he becomes both the patriarch and matriarch of the family, because they’d lost their parents. Tom was brilliant the way he kind of embraced the matriarchal kind of more feminine side of the character…we always knew he was an inoculate character who couldn’t express himself. That’s in the story and a lot of these hard bitten, southern folk are like that. They don’t talk about their feelings in the way that modern day New Yorkers might. So there was that quality [and] Tom kind of took those ingredients and really added to them and added extra warmth and humor which we were thrilled about.”
Cave:
“He was everything we didn’t expect. When he arrived, he was three stone heavier than he was supposed to be - I think he had Batman next. I’d written this… snake-like character, and all the description was like, ‘He looks… snake-like’ and ‘He moves, like a snake…’. There was a song called The Snake Song. And he wound up like a f**king bullock. We were like, weren’t you supposed to be a snake? Now it’s, ‘He walks… bullock-like.’”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9h2i2UoJm1qe5f96o1_400.jpg)
