Hugh Jackman in PRISONERS?

By Matt Holmes / June 25, 2011

During the spring, Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale and director Bryan Singer came within a whisker away of making the hotly tiped Aaron Guzikowski script Prisoners; a dark, gritty, kidnap thriller in the vein of Taken into a feature, only for Bale to instead take a liking to the script for The Fighter, another project Wahlberg had championed and needed a co-star for, and they made that instead. Wahlberg was still happy because he finally had a man to make his three year passion project with but at the same time, he just wouldn't let Prisoners die. He is a big believer in Guzikowski's script and he always knew he could get a big name to act opposite him. According to the locals in Derby, Connecticut... the town the movie will shoot in next February, that man will be Hugh Jackman.

By my calculations, Jackman's free until he shoots Real Steel for Shawn Levy in June, so I think this could be solid info. When Singer left, Wahlberg quickly sought out his Shooter director Antoine Fuqua to helm, and it's with his direction this project will finally be realised. Here's the plot we were given earlier this year...

After his 6-year-old daughter and her friend are kidnapped, a small-town carpenter butts heads with a young, brash detective in charge of the investigation. The father is a Bible-reading, deer-hunting survivalist. The cop, meanwhile, can€™t wait to get to the city. Feeling failed by the law, the father captures the man he believes responsible and begins to torture him in a desperate attempt to find out what he did with the girls, whom he€™s convinced are still alive.

More recent coverage of the movie say the two lead characters are lifelong friends. Wahlberg/Jackman - a good old fashioned character revenge thriller - from the director of Training Day - in the vein of Taken/Gran Torino/Edge of Darkness - with a black listed screenplay described as being a genre game-changer like Se7en and Silence of the Lambs. Yup... I'll be seeing that. via - coming soon