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Fantastic Four Director Confirms Al Capone Drama Fonzo for 2019 Release
Josh Trank, the director behind 2015’s much-maligned Fantastic Four, has confirmed his Al Capone drama Fonzo is set for release later this year. News of the project first broke back in 2016 when it was reported that Mad Max: Fury Road and Venom lead Tom Hardy would star as the infamous Chicago gangster. It was also confirmed that unlike many an Al Capone film before it (like The Untouchables) that focused on his heyday, Fonzo would focus on Capone’s sad final days when the gangster was driven mad by neurosyphilis before dying at the young age of 48.
Not much more was heard about the production for a while until last year, when it was reported that several other talented actors would be joining the Fonzo cast alongside Hardy, including Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) as Capone’s doctor, Linda Cardellini (Avengers: Age of Ultron, The Curse of La Llorona) as his wife Mae, and Matt Dillon (There’s Something About Mary, The House That Jack Built) as his best mate Johnny. Soon after, Hardy treated the world to a sneak peek of himself looking very convincing as an ailing Al Capone in a photo he posted on Instagram.
Now Trank has announced that Fonzo will be released at some point later this year. Posting from his Twitter account, the director had this to say of both his upcoming new movie and his past endeavours:
“Failure was a gift. It forced me to walk an honest path, and I'm way happier today than I ever was before. I have a film out later this year, starring Tom Hardy, called FONZO that I wrote, directed, and edited. We had so much fun making it & it's my best work as a filmmaker.”
Trank’s mention of failure is clearly a reference to Fantastic Four. The director’s second movie after his highly-rated 2012 debut, Chronicle, Fantastic Four was nigh on universally panned and went on to earn a number of Golden Raspberry Awards, including a Worst Director nod for Trank. Reportedly, the film even got Trank fired from a stand-alone Star Wars film he was set to direct. Judging by Trank’s comments, however, it seems he’s now bounced back from that particular career low. Recently, the director has reached a point where he’s able to be somewhat self-deprecating about the mess that was Fantastic Four. Earlier this year, he responded to a tweet from filmmaker Joseph Kahn about the recent success of Captain Marvel that stated “No superhero movie fails” with an amusing “Hold my beer”.
Fonzo looks like it could be a great rebound film for Trank too. The period of Capone’s life on which the film will focus is certainly full of interesting and relatively unmined subject matter, and he’s got a great cast onboard to boot. There couldn’t be a better star than Hardy for the film, either. He’s got plenty of experience taking on the role of real-life gangsters, having previously played Charles Bronson in the 2008 crime biopic Bronson and the Kray twins in 2015’s Legend. With two movies that received wildly different critical responses to his name so far, it’ll definitely be interesting to see how Trank’s Fonzo turns out.
