Tom Hooper to direct Les Miserables? Turned down Iron Man 3 gig

Admittedly I had never heard the name Tom Hooper before 2009's The Damned United, and even after The King's Speech exploded his profile I've been at a loss to see what all the fuss was about. An elegant film to be sure, but it didn't impress me enough to make me think someone else couldn't have done a similar job.  But what if Hooper had taken on a flick which demanded a totally different tone than the ones he established in John Adams and The King's Speech? Something like...say...Iron Man 3?

A source close to the Brit filmmaker tells 24 Frames that Hooper was in fact Marvel's first choice to replace Jon Favreau as director. Hooper turned the job down, probably noticing the same ill fit we did. The gig thankfully went to Shane Black(Lethal Weapon), and the rest was history. Hooper now sees himself as a frontrunner to win both Best Director and Best Picture at the Academy Awards this season. I'm betting Shane Black will be up for no such honors after Iron Man.

So no pulsar cannons and smart bombs are in Hooper's future, but maybe a chance to adapt one of the most acclaimed novels of all-time? 24 Frames also reports that Hooper is circling an adaptation of Les Miserables, Victor Hugo's classic 1862 novel which has been performed on stage consistently for the last 25 years.

Working Title would be producing, with the idea to make this a much larger-scale musical production, a far cry from the 1998 version(starring Speech's Geoffrey Rush) which featured no songs at all.