Tradecraft: Tom Hardy Swaps Clancy Spies

Deadline reports that Tom Hardy (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) is still determined to play a Tom Clancy spy... just not the one we'd thought. Hardy was previously rumored for the role of John Clark in the Clark origin story Without Remorse, with the plan to build a parallel franchise to the rebooted Jack Ryan series with Chris Pine so that the two characters could eventually team up, as they do frequently in Clancy's novels. I liked that plan, as I like both actors and think they deserve a better spy team-up than This Means War turned out to be. Hardy seemed like a great choice, to me, for Clark, who was previously played by Willem Dafoe (in Clear and Present Danger) and Liev Schrieber (in The Sum of All Fears). But that casting seems unlikely now, as yesterday the trade blog reported that Hardy has become attached to another Clancy property, Splinter Cell. Splinter Cell is a hugely popular series of videogames Clancy created (or at least lent his name to), which in turn spawned a series of paperback original novels, two of which were written by James Bond continuation author Raymond Benson under the pseudonym of David Michaels. In June, videogame publisher Ubisoft began talking to studios about setting up a Splinter Cell film. (And it's not the first incarnation of such; a few years ago Peter Berg was attached to direct a different version.) Then, Paramount seemed like the frontrunner, because of their other Clancy properties. There's still no studio attached now, but Ubisoft has begun attaching elements themselves. Besides Hardy, who will play top covert operative Sam Fisher, screenwriter Eric Warren Singer (The International) is attached to pen the screenplay. In related news, the trade blog also reports that Clancy switched agencies this week, signing with WME.