Fresh off his defining turn as Don Draper in AMC’s Mad Men series, The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Jon Hamm has landed a lead role in Edgar Wright’s upcoming crime drama, Baby Driver.
Hamm boards the project as a villain who, alongside Jamie Foxx’s nefarious crime boss, puts Ansel Elgort’s lead character through the wringer. Toplining Wright’s feature as a gifted getaway driver, an ailing ear condition isn’t enough to prevent him from becoming the best in the business. But such talent can naturally attract the wrong king of attention, and it doesn’t take long before our protagonist is under the watchful eye of Foxx’s sly kingpin.
Taking him under the wing in preparation for a daring heist, Elgort’s partially deaf driver finds himself between a rock and hard place, as any failure or hiccup while on the job won’t bode well for his life expectancy. As for Hamm, THR discloses precious few details about his character, though it’s understood the Mad Men star will play a former Wall Street trader who packs in his career to become a merciless cop killer. We did say Elgort’s lead finds himself in deep with the sharks, didn’t we?
Before sporting his best bad guy persona for Baby Driver, Jon Hamm can next be seen in Greg Mottola’s Keeping Up With The Joneses, with roles in High Wire Act and Marjorie Prime also in the pipeline.
Marking his first foray behind the camera since the hullabaloo that erupted over Ant-Man, Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver will zip into theaters on March 17, 2017, with plans to begin filming before the year’s end.