Legend (new Krays movie with Tom Hardy)

[VR46]

Always enjoy a new Krays book and movie, this is due for release in 2015. Tom Hardy is playing both Ronnie & Reggie. Info and first image below. Helgeland will hopefully make a decent job of it.

Quite a contrast, Hardy playing the Krays and Elton John in the same year

The first image has been released of Tom Hardy playing former underworld kingpins the Kray twins in Brian Helgeland's forthcoming biopic.

Titled Legend, the crime thriller will chart the tortured and unique relationship between the brothers as they embark on a reign of terror in 1960s gangland London. The cast also features Emily Browning, David Thewlis, Christopher Eccleston, Chazz Palminteri and Tara Fitzgerald.

The Krays were feared, yet iconic participants in the swinging 60s as owners of a West End nightclub, Esmeralda's Barn. The brothers mixed with figures such as Diana Dors, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland, and posed for the photographer David Bailey at the height of their infamy. Helgeland's biopic will inevitably be compared to the 1990 Peter Medak film, The Krays, which starred brothers Gary and Martin Kemp as the gangsters.

The twins were finally arrested and charged with murder in May 1968, and both were convicted and jailed the following year. Ronnie, who may have suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, lived in Broadmoor hospital until his death in 1995, while Reggie was released from prison on compassionate grounds in August 2000, just eight weeks prior to his death from cancer.

Hardy has become something of a specialist at portraying larger-than-life real-world figures. He made his name with a bravura performance as the ultra-violent prisoner Charles Bronson in Nicolas Winding Refn's 2008 film Bronson, and next year stars as singer Elton John in the biopic Rocketman.

Helgeland is best known for directing Jackie Robinson biopic 42 and co-writing the Oscar-winning screenplay for LA Confidential. The US director will begin shooting Legend this week.