Best-selling Cold War thriller soon to be a major motion picture with an all-star cast? We’re in, but we’ll have to wait a little while. Filming just started on Child 44, based on the 2008 debut novel by Tom Rob Smith involving a child murderer in Stalinist Russia and based on a true crime.
The protagonist, Leo Demidov, is played by Tom Hardy, possibly the busiest guy in show biz at the moment (he has five films set for release in 2014). Noomi Rapace plays his wife (slacker only has two films coming out next year, including Animal Rescue, based on the Dennis Lehane short story and also starring Tom Hardy).
The Child 44 cast also includes Gary Oldman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jason Clarke, and Joel Kinnaman. Daniel Espinosa is directing. Richard Price is writing the screen adaptation. And the Czech Republic is standing in for the Soviet Union. (They’re filming in and around Prague now.) Release is scheduled for late 2014.
I read the book and it was very good. I can’t wait to see a film version.