Tom Hardy's 'Child 44' Pushing Ahead With Summit, Worldview (Exclusive)

After numerous fits and starts, Soviet-era thriller Child 44 finally might become a reality.

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Worldview Entertainment is closing in on a deal to co-finance and executive produce the film with Summit Entertainment, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter. Ridley Scott, who initially was planning to direct Child 44, and Michael Costigan are producing via Scott Free.

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Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace are attached to star in Child 44, with Swedish filmmaker Daniel Espinosa (Safe House) on board to direct from an adapted script by Richard Price. Espinosa is eyeing a June start date.

Set during the 1950s, Child 44 follows a member of the Soviet police who, while investigating a brutal serial killer, finds himself the target of his own government’s suspicions.

Hardy would play the Soviet officer, while Rapace would play his wife, who pretends to be a doting partner but is concealing many thoughts and feelings. Hardy and Rapace also star in Fox Searchlight and Chernin Entertainment's Animal Rescue, which is currently filming.

Child 44 is the second high-profile studio project to attract Worldview in recent days. The New York-based financing and production company, which emerged on the scene a year ago, is partnering with Searchlight and New Regency on Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Birdman, starring Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton and Amy Ryan.

Worldview's slate also includes James Gray's Lowlife, starring Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix and Jeremy Renner, which The Weinstein Co. will distribute in the U.S.; Guillaume Canet’s crime thriller Blood Ties, starring Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, Cotillard and Mila Kunis; and Atom Egoyan’s West Memphis biopic Devil’s Knot, starring Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth.