Johnny Depp and Tom Hardy Joining Whitey Bulger Movie

After initially walking away from the project over a salary dispute, Johnny Depp is now signed on to play infamous Boston crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger in Black Mass with Bane himself, Tom Hardy, reportedly in talks to play the young FBI agent he corrupts. Production is slated to commence in May.

Deadline reports that Depp is "set" to play the now 84-year-old Bulger, who was sentenced last fall to two life sentences plus five years for his role in multiple murders and racketeering. He reigned over the Boston Irish underworld for roughly three decades until going on the lam in 1995. He was missing for 16 years until his arrest in 2011 in Santa Monica, Calif., where he'd been living under a false identity.

According to Deadline, Hardy is in "early talks" to play John Connolly, the FBI agent who recruited Bulger to be his top echelon informant in the Bureau's war against La Cosa Nostra. Bulger eventually corrupted Connolly, with the Boston FBI covering up Bulger's role in numerous murders for nearly two decades. Connolly, who is now in prison, had known of Bulger since he was a child and Bulger was an older local thug in their South Boston neighborhood.

Hardy's Warrior co-star Joel Edgerton had initially been pegged to play Connolly when the project had Barry Levinson attached to direct last year. That incarnation fell apart after Depp's salary dispute.

Cross Creek Pictures and Exclusive Media have since managed to resurrect Black Mass, based on the best-selling book by Boston reporters Dick Lehr and Gerald O’Neill, with Out of the Furnace's Scott Cooper writing and directing it. The project's currently being shopped at the Berlin Film Festival.

A rival Whitey Bulger biopic is in the works with Ben Affleck directing and Matt Damon set to star as Bulger. Director Joe Berlinger has a new documentary, Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger, that made a bit of a splash at the Sundance Film Festival. Bulger, some of you may already know, was also the model for Jack Nicholson's character in The Departed.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com