Last week, Armie Hammer mentioned how his career had suddenly picked up, and that he no longer felt canceled, to the point where he was starting to turn down roles due to his busy schedule.
Shockingly, he’s had to turn down these unspecified roles because one of the projects he’s committed to is Uwe Boll’s next film. That’s right, Hammer is set to star in Boll’s “The Dark Knight.” The actor will play the crime-fighting titular character in a film that’s being described as a “vigilante thriller.” Principal photography is set to begin in Croatia on January 27.
In “The Dark Knight,” based on an original script by Boll, Hammer plays Sanders, who takes justice into his own hands as he sets out to hunt down criminals. While his crusade transforms him into a social media sensation and a hero in the eyes of the public, the local police chief sees him as a menace to society and aims to take him down.
Boll adds that the film’s familiar title should not confuse anyone with Christopher Nolan’s similarly titled 2008 film. It’s a totally different beast: “our movie is very different from Chris Nolan’s movie, so there is no danger of confusion.”
Over the years, Boll has participated in many of our critics/filmmaker polls, he appears to be a reader of this site, so let’s all be nice to him, or, at least, try to be.
“The Dark Knight” is set to be Boll’s 37th film. The German-born filmmaker is mostly known for his ill-received 2000s adaptations of video game franchises, which were all critical and commercial disasters. He retired in 2016 to become a restaurateur, but returned to filmmaking with “First Shift” (the glorious trailer).
A few years ago, Boll proclaimed himself to be “the only genius in the whole fucking [movie] business" and that other directors such as Michael Bay and Eli Roth are "fucking retards"
How could he not have such high confidence in himself? Especially after releasing 2011’s “Auschwitz,” which he proclaimed as his “masterpiece.” It certainly was the most serious and sober film of his career, a 73-minute holocaust movie that only a filmmaker like Boll could pull off.
Boll’s past films, “House of the Dead” and “Alone in the Dark”, both appear on IMDb's "Bottom 100" film list. He once called one of his major detractors, Ain’t it Cool’s Harry Knowles, a “retard.” When Wired Magazine published a negative review of “Postal”, Boll responded with an infamous email:
You don’t understand anything about movies and you are an untalented wannabe filmmaker with no balls and no understanding what POSTAL is. You don't see courage because you are nothing. and no go to your mom and fuck her ...because she cooks for you now since 30 years ..so she deserves it.
This all led to Boll “challenging” his critics to "put up or shut up". In June 2006, he challenged his five harshest critics each to a 10-round boxing match. One of them was our friend, Jeff Sneider. Boll won all five bouts.