Chris Hemsworth to Star in Movie About Hank Williams’ Ghost
Thor is going country.
TheWrap reports that Chris Hemsworth will produce and star in the movie based on Steve Earle‘s book, I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive. The 2011 novel by the Grammy-winning country star tells a fictional tale of Toby “Doc” Ebersole, the physician accused of giving Hank Williams a fatal dose of morphine. Ten years after the country music pioneer’s death, his doctor is without a license and is supporting his own morphine habit by performing illegal abortions. Feeding his addiction further, Ebersole is haunted by Williams’ ghost.
“The characters in the book are characters related to Hank Williams, heroin and Roe v. Wade, but what the book is about — where it comes from inside of me — is about mortality,” says Earle, who lost his father while writing the book and making an album of the same name.
I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive takes its title from the last single Williams released before his death from heart failure in 1953. Benjamin Grayson adapted the novel’s story for the big screen and will also direct. Co-producing with Hemsworth is Laura Bickford of Traffic fame.
Coincidentally, Hemworth’s Thor co-star, Tom Hiddleston is set to play Hank Williams in I Saw the Light, an upcoming film about the country legend’s rise to superstardom and fall to substance abuse. Both movies follow 2012’s The Last Ride, with Henry Thomas depicting Williams in the last three days of his life, along with the 1964 musical, Your Cheatin’ Heart, with George Hamilton as the country icon.