Armie Hammer lands first movie role since scandal, he’s officially mounting his comeback campaign

For someone who claimed two months ago that he was trading in his truck for a hybrid because he can’t afford the petrol anymore, Armie Hammer at least has the resources to mount a comeback.

The controversial actor who has been persona non grata in Hollywood since early 2021 when allegations of sexual misconduct, assault and cannibalism emerged, has been cast in a movie.

Hammer, who is the great-grandson of oil tycoon Armand Hammer, will return to the big screen in upcoming film Frontier Crucible, an 1870s-set western directed by Travis Mills. The film stars Thomas Jane in the main role, as a former soldier who teams up with outlaws as they traverse the frontier of Arizona.

Neither Hammer nor Mills has revealed what role the actor will have in the project, but producer Dallas Sonnier who bragged he has built a career making “masculine indie movies” told The Hollywood Reporter he was “pumped” to be working with him.

Hammer also posted on Instagram two images of himself against what looked to be the set of Frontier Crucible while holding the script for the film. A third photo is of the script positioned against a rock with his name watermarked across the front page.

The Hammer comeback train is officially boarding. The news of the movie casting comes three days after he announced he was launching a new podcast called The Armie HammerTime Podcast.

Revealing the details on social media, Hammer said in a video it would feature a rotation of guests who will all know something that he doesn’t.

He added, “I’ve been gone for the last four years and now I’m back. What are you going to do? So, it’s going to be a sort of journal, or a chronicling, of putting my life back together.

“Like, I said, some of you are going to love this, some of you are going to hate this but we’re going to have interesting conversations with interesting people. And let you into my world.”

Hammer’s breakout role was in 2010, in David Fincher’s Facebook origin drama The Social Network in which he played the dual roles of the Winklevoss twins. In the following years, Hammer was an in-demand actor, booking gigs in J. Edgar, The Lone Ranger and The Man from UNCLE.

Alongside Timothee Chalamet, he attracted acclaim for his performance in Luca Guadagnino’s LGBTQI romance Call Me By Your Name. He was in the awards conversation but ultimately missed out on an Oscar nomination.

When the allegations against Hammer broke in 2021, he still had two unreleased projects on the books. One was Crisis, a crime drama about the US’s opioid pandemic, which had the unfortunate timing of hitting cinemas within weeks of Hammer’s downfall.

The other was Death on the Nile, Kenneth Branagh’s second Hercule Poirot movie which had been significantly delayed because of Covid. The movie’s eventual marketing minimised Hammer’s role, having been all-but cut out of the trailer.

The accusations against Hammer started with public posts of messages he had sent to various women which were of a sexual nature. Some mentioned sadomasochistic fantasies while in others he revealed cannibalistic desires.

Ex-girlfriend Courtney Vucekovich told Page Six, “He said to me he wants to break my rib and barbecue and eat it”.

A woman using the pseudonym of “Effie” accused him of sexually and emotionally abusive behaviour during a four-year on-and-off relationship. She also claimed there was a 2017 incident in which she claimed he raped her during a four-hour session. He denied the allegations.

In 2023, the Los Angeles district attorney declined to indict him on any charges.

In the immediate aftermath in 2021, he was dropped from by his agency and projects including Shotgun Wedding with Jennifer Lopez (the role was recast with Josh Duhamel), Watergate drama Gaslit, and TV series The Offer.

His then wife of 11 years, Elizabeth Chambers, filed for divorce within weeks of the first allegations.

A 2022 three-part documentary called House of Hammer detailed the saga while his aunt, Casey Hammer, claimed generations of abuse ran through their vaunted family.

In the years since, Hammer said he has relied on the grace of others, including Robert Downey Jr who helped him with sobriety. At times, he claimed his financial situation was dire and he had to sell “timeshares” in the Cayman Islands to pay bills.

This week’s double announcements were not the first time Hammer has attempted to revive his battered reputation. He has previously given extensive interviews to Piers Morgan, actor Tom Arnold and writer James Kirchick.

He claimed to Kirchick that he had attempted suicide and that was sexually abused by a youth pastor when he was 13 years old.

What seems to be different is Hammer is now claiming his own narrative through his podcast. Frontier Crucible is also his first onscreen project since 2021.