Charlie Hunnam Lands Role Alongside Russell Crowe in New Movie

It’s been announced that Sons of Anarchy‘s Charlie Hunnam has landed a new film role alongside megastar Russell Crowe.

According to Variety, the film is titled True History of The Kelly Gang and is based on the Booker Prize-winning novel of the same title by author Peter Carey.

The story is centered on legendary Australian outlaw and Bushranger Ned Kelly who rose to prominence as a notorious but somewhat beloved criminal in the mid to late 1800s.

In addition to Hunnam and Crowe, True History of The Kelly Gang also stars Nicholas Hoult (X-Men: First Class), Essie Davis (The Babadook), Thomasin McKenzie (The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies), Sean Keenan (Hard Target 2), Harry Greenwood (Hacksaw Ridge) and Earl Cave (The End of the F***ing World).

While the news of Hunnam’s casting is just now hitting, it turns out that during an interview with the Boston Herald in Aug. that actor revealed that he has already finished shooting his part.

“Then I just wrapped a movie with Justin Kurzel [True History of The Kelly Gang], which was a real career highlight for me because he’s one of my favorite directors.”

Hunnam has a full-schedule as of late, as he has the films A Million Little Pieces, Triple Frontier, and Jungleland on the horizon as well, and he just put out Papillon, which is another non-fiction-based film about French convict Henri Charrière and his attempt to escape a penal colony island after being falsely convicted.

During his conversation with the Boston Herald, Hunnam opened up about Papillon and shared that even though Charriere wrote two separate autobiographies about his experience, it was an entirely different autobiography that he drew inspiration from.

“The book that I referenced and kept going back to over and over was actually neither of the Henri Charriere Papillon books,” he admitted. “I was much more interested in a book called The Dry Guillotine by Rene Belbenoit, which is an amazing account of another Henri man who was in the French Guiana prison system.”

“He was a journalist, so he had a much more analytical and journalistic approach to documenting his time and so for us to really understand — I mean Papillon is a wonderful narrative and beautifully written and really fun to read, but it’s an action adventure,” Hunnam added. “The Dry Guillotine is a much more academic piece.”

“Within that, you get a much more visceral experience through his writing of what it must have been like to be in French Guiana. That to me was the heat of it, just to try to create some sense of transportation into this environment,” he went on to say. “That’s I think what I got so excited about working with Michael Noer on this, because for him, it was all about trying to create an environment and trying to create an experience that would feel quite visceral for the audience.”

At this time, True History of The Kelly Gang does not have an announced release date.