Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hardy and Shia Labeouf In John Hillcoat’s The Wettest County First Look

Yeah, we already had a little chat about John Hillcoat’s upcoming The Wettest County in the World project, but still, we’re here today for a little update! It’s time for a few set photos thanks to producer Cassian Elwes, who shared them on his Twitter. Not so good quality, as you already see, but who cares…

By now you know that The Wettest County in the World is actually an adaptation of Matt Bondurant‘s novel of the same name which centers on two brothers who become bootleggers in the American south during Prohibition.

On the other hand, you also know that the movie has great cast which includes Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Jason Clarke, Mia Wasikowska, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Dane DeHaan and Jessica Chastain, while Nick Cave is responsible for the screenplay.

Here’s a description of the novel once again: “…the Bondurants, bootlegging brothers runnin’ stills, runnin’ loads, and runnin’ from the law in Depression-era Virginia. The book is mainly narrated through the experience of the youngest Bondurant, Jack, and his family’s moonshine enterprise supplies the action in a plot that evokes the culture of distilling and distributing white lightning.

To optimistic Jack, bootlegging is both a bond to his older brothers, Forrest and Howard, and a means to make cash to impress a girl. Forrest, by contrast, is taciturn and suspicious: the world is violent, and he meets it on that ground. Tender of the stills and imbiber from same, burly Howard is always ready to take on the Bondurants’ enemies, corrupt law officers. Wending through this conflict in flash-forward mode is novelist Sherwood Anderson, who plumbs the Bondurant story a few years after the brothers’ climactic confrontation with the county sheriff. Descriptively gritty and emotionally resonant, novelist Bondurant dramatically projects the poverty and danger at the heart of the old-time bootlegging life.”

Just in case you’re wondering when we’ll have a chance to see the whole thing, here’s what Matt Bondurant, the author of the novel, had to say on his Twitter:

“I decided that when the Wettestcounty movie goes to Cannes this May I’m only going if I get to fly in a private jumbo jet w/ Kanye West.”