Just when it seems like he couldn’t climb any higher, “Thor” villain Tom Hiddleston is set to scale “High-Rise,” a thriller based on the 1975 novel by J. G. Ballard.
The actor is set to star in the film being directed by Ben Wheatley (“Kill List”) from a screenplay by Amy Jump, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The satirical book takes place in a luxurious high-rise tower in 1970s England, where the increasingly isolated residents lose sense of social ethics and devolve into violent barbarism. Hiddleston will play a young doctor who is helplessly drawn into the madness of the tower’s tenants.
Jeremy Thomas is producing through Recorded Picture Company. “High-Rise” will begin shooting this summer in the U.K.
Hollywood has previously adapted two very different Ballard works: Steven Spielberg cast a young Christian Bale in 1987’s WWII memoir “Empire of the Sun,” while Thomas and director David Cronenberg brought Ballard’s fetishistic “Crash” to the big screen in 1996.
Hiddleston was recently sen reprising his signature role as Loki in “Thor: The Dark World,” and will next be seen in Jim Jarmusch’s “Only Lovers left Alive.” He’s also set to star in Guillermo Del Toro’s “Crimson Peak.”