Out of the Bond race, Jacob Elordi lands a dark true-crime role as a killer who demanded his own execution
Jacob Elordi has landed a part once played by Tommy Lee Jones — big boots to fill, but which role is it?
So, as it turns out, Jacob Elordi won’t be sipping martinis for Her Majesty after all—his name’s apparently off the shortlist for the next James Bond. That may disappoint a few 007 diehards, but honestly, let’s talk about what he’s doing instead (because it’s so much more bleak, weird, and interesting).
Death Row and Hollywood
Deadline’s dropped word that Elordi is taking the lead in a new film adaptation of The Executioner's Song—that’s the proper grim Norman Mailer novel about Gary Gilmore, an ex-con who set off an utter media circus in the 1970s by demanding the state hurry up and execute him. Not everyone’s aware, but Gilmore was convicted of killing two men in Utah, and after being sentenced to death, he shunned all legal appeals and insisted they get on with it. The story is an all-timer for anyone obsessed with the death penalty’s twisted history in America.
The new film rights are locked in by United Artists, with Elordi not just starring, but also producing (alongside his manager Matt Vioral, Scott Stuber, Nick Nesbitt, and Sherry Marsh). If that’s not enough for you Mailer fanatics, Lawrence Schiller, who directed the original TV film and knew Gilmore, is executive producing.
The 1977 execution of Gary Gilmore was the first in the United States after a ten-year moratorium on the death penalty.
Old Movie, New Faces
The last time we saw The Executioner's Song on screen, it was 1982, in a TV movie with Tommy Lee Jones playing Gilmore and Rosanna Arquette as Nicole Baker, the young widow Gilmore gets involved with just before things spiral.
This new take, of course, has Elordi in the Gilmore role—no word yet on the 2026 version’s Nicole. Gilmore’s actual story is deeply odd: after coming out of prison (12 years in for robbery), he tries and fails to rebuild his life, falls for Nicole, then reverts to violence. He shoots two men in two consecutive robberies, gets arrested, and quickly becomes a bit of a celebrity due to his refusal to fight the sentence—plus all the legal wrangling, with groups like the ACLU trying to keep him alive against his will. There was even a notorious Saturday Night Live stunt: in 1976, the entire cast sang a Christmas carol parody titled 'Let’s Kill Gary Gilmore for Christmas'. That’s how big this got in the American consciousness.
Gilmore was finally executed by firing squad in 1977—first person to go that way in the US after a decade’s pause on capital punishment. Feels almost unfilmable, but given Elordi’s career after The Kissing Booth (Netflix’s algorithm fodder) and Euphoria (HBO’s adolescent misery parade), and now after stints as a Fennell muse, Elvis in Priscilla, Ridley Scott sci-fi, and even a recent Oscar nomination for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, he’s clearly not keen to play it safe.
- Jacob Elordi – Gary Gilmore and producer
- Matt Vioral, Scott Stuber, Nick Nesbitt – producers (United Artists)
- Sherry Marsh – producer
- Lawrence Schiller – executive producer (directed the 1982 original; interviewed Gilmore in person)
If you want a head start (or a truly dark trip down American true crime), the entire original 1982 NBC movie is floating around on YouTube.