It's funny how the landscape has changed for young Californian actor
Armie Hammer. Not three years ago he was the butt of daily jokes from rabid fanboys who were incensed and confused at the sheer audacity of somebody they had never heard of, or had even seen a picture of, with an awkward sounding name, finding himself wearing the cape and cowl as Batman for
George Miller's failed
Justice League of America. When the project fell apart, many predicated that the burden of unwittingly becoming the face of everything that was wrong about the JLA film would be too much for Hammer to bare and he would barely be heard from again. But director
David Fincher saw whatever George Miller had seen in him a few years earlier and cast him twice for
The Social Network, as the Winklevoss Twins, and now everybody else has seen what the guy can do - suddenly the fanboys couldn't wait to elevate the actor to the top of their
Superman reboot casting wishlists, and indeed he
made it onto mine. Now he's on the Hollywood radar he's going to find offers coming his way all the time and it's no surprise to us to read from
EW that the actor is in talks for a leading role in
Clint Eastwood's now titled
J.Edgar - the veteran's next film, a biopic that finds
Leonardo DiCaprio leading as the former chief of the FBI.
The role Hammer has landed is a major one - that of Clyde Tolson, the F.B.I. official who many suspect was Hoover's gay lover. He's on the right next to Hoover in the picture above. It's a huge, huge, huge role for Hammer who will no doubt relish the challenge to go toe-to-toe with the formidable DiCaprio.
Dustin Lance Black (Milk) has scripted the biopic but we are told Hoover's alleged cross-dressing and any actual intimate homosexual scenes are almost non existent, it's all about subtext and sexual tension. However their relationship/friendship is the key to the film.
As I was typing this...
Vulture says an offer has also been made to
Charlize Theron to join the film as Helen Gandy, who was Hoover's personal secretary. She is described on
Wiki as "a wraith-like, grim-faced spinster from New Jersey" and...
Hoover biographers Theoharis and Cox would say "her stern face recalled Cerberus at the gate,"a view echoed by Anthony Summers in his life of Hoover, who also pictured Gandy as Hoover's first line of defense against the outside world.
Filming begins early 2011 and with the speed Eastwood works, it could be in theatres in less than a year's time.