If that headline didn’t make you spit out your root beer float in excitement, I daresay you aren’t much of a movie person. Back in December, we brought you the news that John Hillcoat’s Prohibition-era bootlegging drama The Wettest County in the World was back in the works after falling apart sometime after the originally reported cast (Ryan Gosling, Shia LaBeouf, Scarlett Johansson, Paul Dano and Michael Shannon) left the project due to numerous delays. Quickly becoming all but a distant memory of a film that would never quite be, most were excited to hear the the film was back on. While LaBeouf was still announced as a star, rising screen actor Tom Hardy was now filling the role once occupied by Gosling.

Now, if the prospect of this film were not exciting enough based on the director, the source material, and Tom Hardy starring, it was announced today that Guy Pearce (who previously worked with Hillcoat on the masterful The Proposition) and demigod Gary Oldman are signed on in significant supporting roles. Rounding out the cast is Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, and Jason Clarke. Here’s the descrption from The Hollywood Reporter:

Based on the novel The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant, and on his grandfather and two great-uncles, the true gangsters story details of the saga of the Bondurant boys, bootlegging siblings who take the law into their own hands in Prohibition-era Virginia while making a run for the American Dream. Nick Cave wrote the screenplay.
Pearce will play an overly violent deputy who comes down hard on the Bondurants while Oldman will play a gangster who engages the boys to deliver alcohol.

Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland and The Kids Are All Right) plays LeBeouf’s love interest, a local Mennonite girl. Clarke (TV’s Chicago Code) is playing the brother to LaBeouf and Hardy. …

The movie is currently in pre-production in Georgia and is scheduled to begin filming on Feb. 28.

I just picked up the book on the Borders clearance shelf a few weeks back and I am really looking forward to reading it. This adaptation, which is penned by our favorite everyman Nick Cave – is shaping up to be epic… and maybe this will finally be the film that really puts John Hillcoat on the mainstream map. All I am saying is that Hillcoat better get a nice shiny new suit, because based on the strength of those involved, I have a feeling he will be attending quite a few awards ceremonies once this comes out.