Gareth Evans may have come agonizingly close to directing Joe Manganiello’s Deathstroke before the project fell apart, but he’s finally settled on his first major Hollywood action movie, and it sounds like it’s going to be spectacular.
The filmmaker has signed an exclusive deal with Netflix, and his first project under the brand new working relationship will be Havoc, with Tom Hardy set to play the lead role and co-produce. The plot begins with a drug deal gone wrong, forcing Hardy’s detective to fight his way through the criminal underworld to rescue the estranged son of a prominent politician, all while unraveling a citywide web of corruption and conspiracy.
Quite frankly, we need this injected directly into our eyeballs right now. Evans exploded onto the scene and instantly established himself as one of action cinema’s most exciting voices by writing, directing, producing, editing and choreographing the fight sequences in The Raid and its sequel, two of the genre’s finest efforts in the last decade, while Hardy is one of the most reliable and consistently excellent actors in the business, so this sounds like a match made in heaven.
Evans hasn’t helmed a feature since 2018’s Apostle, the psychological horror starring Dan Stevens that was also released by Netflix, and the promise of him returning to the shady underworld of cops and criminals with a talent of Hardy’s caliber is big news for action fans, especially those who enjoyed Gangs of London, the nine-episode crime thriller he co-created that debuted to widespread acclaim last year.
There’s no word yet on when Havoc starts shooting, but based on the presence of Gareth Evans and Tom Hardy alone, it’s instantly shot to the top of many people’s most anticipated lists.