UPDATE: Capone has received an official trailer, along with a VOD premiere date.
The Tom Hardy-led Al Capone biopic Fonzo gets a new title (Capone) and distributor for a potential release directly to Video-On-Demand. Although his career as a feature director started off strong with 2012's hit found-footage teens with super-powers thriller Chronicle, Josh Trank ran into a wall when he directed Fox's now-infamous Fantastic Four reboot in 2015. Within the span of twelve months, Fantastic Four had bombed both critically and commercially following a tumultuous shoot and Trank stepped away from his high-profile gig directing a Boba Fett movie for Lucasfilm.
Instead, in late 2016, it was announced Trank would return to non-franchise fare by directing Fonzo, a movie about Capone towards the end of the gangster's life, after he'd spent a decade in prison and his mental capacities had diminished due to his late-stage syphilis. Production eventually got underway in April 2018, with Hardy starring opposite a supporting cast led by names like Linda Cardellini, Kyle MacLachlan, Matt Dillon, and Noel Fisher. However, there's been little to no word about the project since almost exactly a year ago, when Trank claimed the film would release in 2019.
According to Film Ratings, Fonzo has since been retitled Capone and is set to be distributed by Vertical Entertainment after receiving an R rating "for strong/bloody violence, pervasive language and some sexuality." Vertical is known for releasing the vast majority of their films directly to VOD with a limited theatrical rollout, so it stands to reason they're planning to do the same with Capone.
It's not exactly a mystery why the movie's been retitled; Capone is a more generic name than Fonzo, for sure, but it's also both something people in general are more likely to recognize and immediately tells them what the movie is (a gangster memoir). As for the film possibly going straight to streaming, that could be the outcome of bigger distributors feeling Capone simply isn't marketable/good enough to justify a full theatrical run and/or being wary of collaborating with Trank after what happened on Fantastic Four (not to mention, his habit of rilling people up on Twitter in recent years). Alternatively, with theaters currently shut down because of the coronavirus outbreak, it's possible Trank and the movie's backers decided a straight-to-VOD release via Vertical was a smarter approach than waiting to try and lock down a theatrical run - one which probably wouldn't have happened anytime soon, anyway.
Even as a VOD release, though, Capone is still intriguing. Far from being a paint by numbers biopic, the film sounds like a more reflective biographical drama and a strong acting showcase for Hardy as an older, frailer, and heavily scarred (both physically and psychologically) version of the notorious crime boss. With people stuck at home self-quarantining because of the virus, Vertical might even decide to fast-track its release and premiere Capone on-demand within the next couple months. If so, cinephiles won't have to wait long to decide for themselves if the movie is worth the time of day.
Source: Film Ratings [via IndieWire]