Today’s a Great Day for Tom Hardy Fans

A year after Tom Hardy starred in Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi epic, Inception, he played a mixed martial arts fighter opposite Joel Edgerton in 2011’s Warrior. The sports drama was directed and co-written by Gavin O’Connor, who also directed The Accountant and its upcoming sequel, The Accountant 2.

Warrior also stars Oscar-nominee Nick Nolte, Jennifer Morrison (Once Upon a Time), and Frank Grillo (Tulsa King), who will soon be seen in James Gunn’s Superman. The film follows Hardy and Edgerton’s characters, Tommy and Brendan, estranged brothers who enter an MMA tournament.

Hardy Stars as an Ex-Marine Turned MMA Fighter

Tommy (Hardy) is an ex-Marine dealing with a tragic past who returns home to his father Paddy (Nolte), who is a former wrestling coach and recovering alcoholic. Paddy is enlisted by Tommy to help him train for “Sparta,” — the biggest MMA tournament ever held. Tommy’s younger brother, Brendan (Edgerton), also ends up in the tournament and the brothers confront each other both in and out of the ring.

The movie was not a box office hit as it earned $23.3 million against a budget of $25, per Box Office Mojo. However, both its critic and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes are a respectable 84% and 92%, respectively.

Warrior (2011)

MobLand is streaming on Paramount+

Edgerton has gone on to star in several movies and TV series throughout his career, including Apple TV+’s Dark Matter and Disney+’s Obi-Wan Kenobi. Hardy currently stars in the Paramount+ series MobLand with Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren. He also starred in the Venom film franchise, playing Venom/Eddie Brock.

Hardy plays a “fixer” named Harry Da Sousa in MobLand, and the series reunites the actor with executive producer/director Guy Ritchie. The pair first worked together on RocknRolla in 2008. The film also starred Idris Elba, Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Strong, and Thandiwe Newton. Hardy had not realized that so much time had passed since he worked with Ritchie.

“I didn’t realize it was 17 years,” Hardy said in a previous interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “That’s quite a long time, isn’t it? Well, I just called him on the phone, and it didn’t feel like that much time had passed, and he was already interwoven into the project. So we had a catch-up and pretty shortly afterward, we were on set working. So it was pretty straightforward,” Hardy said.

MobLand Sets a Record for the Streamer

Thus far, MobLand, which premiered on March 30, has done well with audiences and critics alike and holds a 79% Rotten Tomatoes critic score and a 73% audience score. A week after the series premiered, the show set a record for Paramount+ as the biggest launch ever for a new series on the streamer. MobLand has drawn in 8.8 million viewers globally since its debut and, even more impressively, has seen a rise in viewership of 298% since its premiere date. The next episode of MobLand premieres on April 20.

For fans of director Gavin O’Connor, The Accountant 2, starring Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, and Cynthia Addai-Robinson, hits theaters on April 25. Warrior is streaming on Netflix.