Charlie Hunnam’s Career Pivots to Screenwriting: ‘Only Act in Things That I Write’

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Charlie Hunnam has got the writer’s itch, it seems. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter,  he revealed that he’s completely switching trajectories. He wants to switch to screenwriting and make that his primary focus —while possibly staying in front of the camera.

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Hunnam Says He’s Switching to Writing Full-Time After Shantaram

“I’m trying to pivot basically full-time after Shantaram into becoming a writer,” he told THR. “I’m by no means going to stop acting,” he added, “but I’m going to try and only act in things that I write.”

The Sons of Anarchy and Queer as Folk star could certainly get away with just staying solely in the limelight. But recently, he’s made it clear that he has a strong creative outlet that needs to be expressed in different ways. This obviously includes keeping busy behind the scenes.

What’s more, having a part in the writing process could potentially open doors for Hunnam’s character work, as he’d be developing the characters from the very beginning. The alternative, of course, is playing a character that someone else conceived. It’s a very different idea.

Was Hunnam Inspired From Adapting a Nearly 1,000-Page Novel to Film?

Hunnam recently produced the new Apple TV+ series Shantaram after falling in love with the book of the same name. That meant adapting the massive 936-page novel to a full series, which needs more than one season to complete the story.

Although Hunnam plays the leading role of Lin in Shantaram, he originally only wanted to produce it. He told EW that he could have seen other actors playing Lin.

“I have a very not fully formed but kind of a philosophical view of these things, that ultimately stories want to get told, and they can get told at different times with different people,” Hunnam said. “I didn’t feel necessary as though this is my role and I’m the only one who can play it, by any means. It’s an amazing role and an amazing story, and there were a lot of people that would have done a splendid job, but I felt very grateful and fortunate that I got to bring it to life.”

Shantaram isn’t Hunnam’s first shot at producing while starring in a film. He also produced The Last Looks, based on a novel of the same name, in 2021. Starring alongside Hunnam were Mel Gibson and Lucy Fry.

And now, Hunnam is in full swing with the writing. He’s already working on multiple projects, one of which is a TV show inspired by his father, William Hunnam. William was a scrap metal merchant in Newcastle, England. Childhood friends are also some of the inspirations for the TV show.

Additionally, Hunnam told THR that he’s also working on some longer feature screenplays and a miniseries that was “set up at an undisclosed studio.” Sounds intriguing!

Possible Jax Return Via Sons of Anarchy Spin-Off

The best part is that we’ll probably keep seeing Charlie Hunnam on the screen. But now he’s going to have more creative control of what he takes part in. One more project that he was dangling as a possibility is a spin-off of Sons of Anarchy, but one that tells more of his character, Jax Teller. Of course, Hunnam himself would be writing the script if this happens.

“I have an idea that I’m exploring in its infancy where that could be a possibility,” Hunnam told Access (via MovieWeb). “It would be something that I would be incredibly excited about, so we’re sort of, like I said, in the infancy of exploring the viability of the idea.”

This would certainly make a lot of SOA fans happy, especially fans of Jax. We haven’t seen Jax since 2014, and that was when the character met his fatal end.

Charlie Hunnam Wants to Challenge Himself

Exactly where his show would fall in the timeline of SOA is unknown at this point. But it shouldn’t be any problem for Charlie Hunnam to create a side story about Jax, considering his aptitude for weaving different storylines. With Shantaram, he made it a point to weave a quest for spirituality with capitalistic greed — two things that wouldn’t normally seem to go hand-in-hand, but he’s pulled it off.

In fact, it almost seems that the more complicated the task, the better for Hunnam. He told EW that he wants to challenge himself more now that he’s older (than when he was in SOA).

“I’m just a different person now,” Hunnam said. “I’m north of 40 now, and I’ve been taking stock of who I am and who I would like to be, and the work that I do is certainly an element of that. I think it was an important step for me to challenge myself in those ways.”

Either way, prepare to see more of Hunnam as well as more of the inner workings of his mind. He told THR that he’s starting to see movement as far as his current screenwriting projects are going.

“I’m starting to get some real traction and I hope to unveil some of this stuff over the next couple of years,” he said.

Read More: Charlie Hunnam Just Wanted to Be a Producer for ‘Shantaram’ Instead of Starring in It

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