Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: After he finishes playing the title role opposite Johnny Depp in Disney’s The Lone Ranger, Armie Hammer is planning to take a dark turn in By Virtue Fall. That is the gritty drama that will mark the directing debut of Up In The Air co-scribe Sheldon Turner. Hammer will play an ATF agent framed on a corruption beef and sent to a maximum security federal prison. He turns into a badass to survive, and when he emerges from that hellhole, he devotes himself to getting revenge on the person who destroyed his life: his former partner (Eric Bana). QED is funding the film and Jennifer Klein is producing with Turner. Hammer will be busy with The Lone Ranger until the summer, and the film will start later this year. Turner wrote the script.

By Virtue Falls gives Hammer the opportunity to play a different kind of character after the Winkelvoss twins in The Social Network, Clyde Tolson in J Edgar and Prince Charming in the upcoming Mirror Mirror. Hammer plans to bulk up and shave his head to play the ATF agent, who puts on the bulk to survive in prison. It will also remind Hollywood Hammer was once set to play Batman in the Justice League movie before Warner Bros halted that film to focus on separate Batman and Superman films. Hammer is repped by WME.

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