Tom Hardy will play an aging Al Capone in an upcoming film entitled Fonzo which begins shooting this spring in New Orleans. Josh Trank (Chronicle, Fantastic Four) will direct the movie focusing on Capone’s final years when he was living in retirement in Florida and his mind was being ravished by a bout with syphilis. “Fonzo” was a nickname Capone’s family had for him, short for Alphonse, his birth name.
Capone died in January 1947 at age 48, almost two decades removed from running the organized crime landscape in Chicago. He was America’s most recognized mob figure during Prohibition, becoming the country’s first celebrity gangster in the modern media age, courting the press while killing many of his enemies in high-profile fashion.
Hardy is best known for roles in the films Mad Max: Fury Road, The Dark Knight Rises and The Revenant and television shows Peaky Blinders and Band of Brothers. His performance in The Revenant (2015) opposite Leonardo DiCaprio earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Hollywood insiders speculate that the British leading man will be in the running to take over the James Bond franchise from Daniel Craig after Craig shoots one more movie as the iconic 007.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Capone relocated to Chicago early in Prohibition and went to work in the rackets. By 1925, he had taken over the city’s Southside Italian mafia. Convicted of tax evasion in 1931, he served eight years in prison. Released in late 1939, he moved to Florida where he had an opulent vacation home on Palm Island in Miami.
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