Noomi Rapace And Tom Hardy: Paired For ‘Animal Rescue,’ What’s Not To Like?

Noomi Rapace and Tom Hardy are confirmed to star opposite each other in Michael Roskam’s upcoming film Animal Rescue.

Nutshelled, the film is based on a short story by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone) about a New York bartender (Hardy) looking to change his criminal ways. Somehow he gets caught up in a nasty heist avec killing and later finds and rescues a pit bull puppy, which brings him to the attentions of its abusive previous owner, Indiewire reports.

Rapace will play the woman (Nadia) Hardy meets when he finds the wounded pit bull outside her home.

Variety notes that Rapace, 33, has been looking for a project with Hardy ever since they both eyed Scott Free’s Child 44. Now, Animal Rescue has stepped into the breach.

Known to most US movie-goers as the actress who segued with aplomb from Niels Arden Oplev’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, to Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, Swede Rapace has since reunited with Oplev in Dead Man Down with Colin Farrell and Terrence Howard, which screens later this year.

As for Hardy — coming off from Inception, Lawless, The Dark Knight Rises, and previous peeks in Star Trek: Nemesis, RocknRolla, Bronson, Warrior, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and This Means War — he needs no introduction to fanboys and will shortly be seen in the title role of George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road.

Production on Animal Rescue is slated to begin this spring in New York, Chernin Entertainment and Mike Larocca are producing and the aforementioned Roskam will bring it in helm.

Rapace and Hardy. See it even sounds good.