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Two-time Academy Award winner Mahershali Ali and Oscar nominee Tom Hardy will star in the crime thriller 77 Blackout, Deadline exclusively reported.
The movie is set on the night New York City lost power and plunged into darkness, resulting in citywide looting and other criminal activity.
Cary Joji Fukunaga is set to direct. Frank John Hughes wrote the script, with Fukunaga's revisions. Charles Roven, fresh off winning a Best Picture Oscar for Oppenheimer, will serve as producer alongside Atlas Entertainment's Madison Weireter and The Cut's William Green and Aaron Ginsburg.
Mahershala Ali and Tom Hardy in '70s heist movie
The film will be introduced at the Cannes Film Festival Market by Black Bear, while WME will represent US rights.
The movie follows the story of five police officers who've gone rogue due to years of being overworked and underpaid who plan a heist to rob three criminal bastions — the Harlem Mob, the Hong Kong triads and the Italian Mafia — one night in in 1977. A blackout plunges the city into darkness on the night of the robbery which forces the crew to find a a way around New York.
Ali won his first Oscar for best supporting actor for 2016's Moonlight and his second for the same category in 2018's Green Book. He was most recently see in Netflix's Leave the World Behind last year. He will next be heard as Aaron Davis in the upcoming animated sequel Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse and Wildwood. Ali will also be in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the Daywalker Blade. The movie is currently in pre-production.
Hardy was nominated for an best supporting actor Oscar for 2016's The Revenant. He was last seen in in the hit series Peaky Blinders as the Jewish gang leader Alfie Solomons. He'll next be seen in the upcoming crime drama The Bikeriders with Austin Butler and Jodie Comer. The movie will premiere at the Telluride Film Festival and then released on June 21. He will also reprise his role as the titular character in the upcoming movie Venom 3.
Primetime Emmy winner Fukunaga most recently directed four episodes of Apple TV+ miniseries Masters of the Air. He also served as executive producer of the fifth True Detective installment, Night Country.
The filmmaker also directed all eight episodes of the first True Detective installment starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, for which he won an Emmy for outstanding directing for a drama series in 2014. He also directed and co-wrote Daniel Craig's final James Bond film, 2021's No Time to Die.
What happened during the 1977 New York City blackout?
In 1977, three lightning strikes effectively crippled the New York City power grid. The first one struck the Buchanan South substation on the Hudson River, the second at the Indian Point nuclear plant and the third at the Yonkers substation in Sprain Brook.
The only unaffected neighborhoods in the city were southern Queens, the Pratt Institute campus in Brooklyn, as well as large apartment and commercial complexes that had their own power generators.
The 1977 blackout occurred when New York was facing a financial crisis and its residents were still terrified due to the Son of Sam murders. Looting and vandalism were widespread in the city, which hit 31 neighborhoods. Crown Heights and Bushwick were the areas reportedly hardest hit. In the end, there were 550 police officers injured and 4,500 looters arrested.
According the The New York Times, on the 42nd anniversary of the event, in July 2019, another blackout occurred which affected 73,ooo people on Manhattan's West Side.
