Early last year there were talks of a new Al Capone movie in the works called Cicero. Though nothing had been signed, Warner Bros. was having discussions with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows director David Yates to helm the project, which would tell the story of Capone in his younger years. Now there's word that not only has Yates officially signed on, they have found a star - and a major one at that.

The Daily Mail recently spoke with Tom Hardy who revealed that he is now attached to star in Cicero and has already begun his research for the part. The actor says that the plans are to start shooting the movie next year, but only after he has completed work on some of the other projects on his plate, including George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road (which begins production this April in Nambia). In his preparation for the part, Hardy has been digging through the Warner Bros. archives and watching gangster movies like The Petrified Forest, The Public Enemy, and Little Caesar, which starred big names like Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson, as well as other films about the prohibition era. Said the actor, "The idea isn’t to remake those films but to get a flavour of them as we explore Capone’s career as a racketeer."

Even more impressive is that Cicero may not just be a one-off film, but rather the first in a series. While nothing is set, Hardy says that they are thinking about creating a trilogy about Capone. Yates is currently attached to direct Cicero and has been doing a bit of rewriting on the original script by Walon Green. Hardy has a huge list of 2012 releases lined up, including Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, John Hillcoat's Wettest County, and McG's This Means War.