Guy Pearce, Gary Oldman, Mia Wasikowska, and Jason Clarke are the latest actors to join the already impressive cast of the Wettest County in the World. Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, and Jessica Chastain have already been cast in the upcoming gangster film adapted from the popular novel by Matt Bondurant.
Set during the Prohibition, The Wettest County in the World is based on the life and times of Bondurant’s real-life bootlegging relatives in Franklin County, Virginia, and the massive moonshining operation they ran in the mountains of southern Virginia.
Tom Hardy (Inception), Shia LaBeouf (Transformers), and Jason Clarke (TV’s Chicago Code) will play the three bootlegging Bondurant brothers, while Oldman (The Fifth Element, Harry Potter) will star as a gangster who hires the boys to deliver alcohol. Pearce (Memento, L.A. Confidential) will play an overly violent deputy who shows the Bondurant boys no mercy, and LaBeouf’s Mennonite love interest will be played by The Kids Are All Right star Mia Wasikowska.
Nick Cave penned the Wettest County in the World screenplay and Lucy Fisher and Douglas Wick will be producing alongside Michael Benaroya and Megan Ellison. The movie, due to begin filming later this month, is currently in pre-production in Georgia.
Sounds like a pretty good movie (and book). After all, who doesn’t like a good Prohibition gangster flick?