Tom Hardy smiling on the red carpetImage via Ian West/PA Images/INSTARimages.com
2026 is shaping up to be a relatively quiet year for Tom Hardy, but 2025 was anything but. Hardy kicked off last year by returning to Netflix to star in the unflinching new action thriller, Havoc, which was surging back into streaming charts earlier this year despite being months removed from its global release. Hardy also worked with director Guy Ritchie for the first time on the debut season of MobLand, the hit crime thriller series at Paramount+. On the backs of other stars like Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren, MobLand became one of Paramount’s biggest new releases. Season 2 production officially wrapped not long ago, though it’s still unclear at this time when the sophomore season of the show will begin streaming.
15 years ago, Hardy teamed up with Gary Oldman for one of his most famous and underrated movies, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The film is based on the novel of the same name by John le Carré, with a script from Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan. Tomas Alfredson stepped behind the camera to direct Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and even all these years later, it’s still viewed as his most famous project. The film earned solid scores of 84% from critics and 65% from audiences on the aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, and it grossed $81 million at the box office against an estimated budget of around $20 million, making it a solid financial success. In America, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is streaming on Prime Video, but globally, it’s become one of the most popular VOD purchased on Apple TV. It’s the perfect mash-up of James Bond and Slow Horses for fans of espionage thrillers set during a time of war.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
What Is ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ About?
The official synopsis for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy reads as follows:
“In the bleak days of the Cold War, espionage veteran George Smiley (Gary Oldman) is forced from semi-retirement to uncover a Soviet Agent within MI6.”
The film also stars Colin Firth as Bill Haydon and Mark Strong as Jim Prideaux. Oldman’s performance in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy made him the perfect choice to lead Apple TV’s British spy thriller, Slow Horses, which has already aired five seasons with more on the way.
Check out Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on Prime Video and stay tuned to Collider for more streaming updates and coverage of Hardy’s future projects.
