Tom Hardy is in talks to play both Kray twins in a new biopic of the notorious British mobsters, reports Screen Daily.

Described as a thriller, the film will be written and directed by LA Confidential screenwriter Brian Helgeland. It is expected to shoot in the UK later this year.

Hardy has experience with the crime biopic, having made his name with a tour de force performance as the ultra-violent prisoner Charles Bronson in Nicolas Winding Refn's 2008 film Bronson. In 2015, the actor is also set to star as Elton John in the biopic Rocketman.

The Krays were feared yet iconic participants in the swinging sixties as owners of a West End nightclub, Esmeralda's Barn. They mixed with figures such as Diana Dors, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland, and posed for the photographer David Bailey at the height of their infamy.

Helgeland's untitled biopic will inevitably be compared to the 1990 Peter Medak film, The Krays, which starred brothers Gary and Martin Kemp as the gangsters. The American film-maker's version will chart the tortured and unique relationship between the brothers. There are reportedly corners of the script for famous participants in the Kray legend such as Jack "the Hat" McVitie, who Reggie murdered in 1965, and Lord Boothby, whose corrupt association with the siblings may have helped them escape the long arm of the law for several years. Detective superintendent Leonard "Nipper" Read, who finally put the brothers behind bars after a determined campaign, is expected to play a prominent part in the tale.

The twins were finally arrested in May 1968, and both were convicted and jailed the following year. Ronnie, who may have suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, lived in Broadmoor hospital until his death in 1995, while Reggie was released from prison on compassionate grounds in August 2000, just eight weeks prior to his death from cancer.

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