Last June, it was reported that Ichi the Killer and Audition director Takashi Miike was planning on helming writer Andrew Baldwin’s The Outsider with Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises, upcoming Mad Max: Fury Road) in the lead role.
Now, Twitch has learned that Hardy has backed out of the project and will no longer star. Pre-production was already underway, but that has now been put on hold while the producers search for a new star. The site says that Hardy’s departure has also pushed the film outside of Miike’s window of availability, meaning the film is also in need of a new director.
Based on an idea by John Linson, the film is set in post-World War II Japan, where an American former prisoner-of-war rises in the yakuza.
Linson is producing alongside his father, Art Linson, as well as with Steve Richards, Andrew Rona and Joel Silver.
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)
