The hot young acting pair will team up to make “The Wettest County in the World,” a Prohibition-era dramatic thriller from director John Hillcoat (“The Road”), according to two people familiar with the film.

LaBeouf, who had previously been mentioned in conjunction with the project, and Hardy, who hadn’t, will both be taking a turn to period pieces. LaBeouf did star in the golf movie “The Greatest Game in the World” but is of course best known for action movies and thrillers.

Hardy, meanwhile, was in adaptations such as “Wuthering Heights” and “Black Hawk Down” but is best known for his role as the agent Eames in “Inception” this summer, and he has an as yet unrevealed part in “The Dark Knight Rises.” (He’s also currently shooting the Reese Witherspoon romantic comedy “This Means War.”)Nick Cave wrote the screenplay for “County” (speaking of teen pinups, albeit from another era). The film is based on a novel from Matt Bondurant about a family of Prohibition-era bootleggers, and crimes committed by and against them. The movie, an independently financed project that’s being produced by the producers of “Jarhead” and “Girl, Interrupted,” aims to begin shooting in the spring.

The firming up of LaBeouf and Hardy for “County” does put a pin, at least for the moment, in “College Republicans,” in which LaBeouf was to play a young Lee Atwater and, sources say, Paul Dano a young Karl Rove, in the “Social Network”-esque story about the two conservative kingmakers in college.

That would have been juicy. But to see LaBeouf and Hardy as bootleggers may be worth the wait.

Thanks ShiaLaBeoufDaily