Posted by | Cyrena Rose
Deadline reports actor David Oyelowo (The Help, Red Tails, Middle of Nowhere) is attached to play iconic boxer Sugar Ray Robinson in a biopic…
The film will be based on the Wil Haygood biography Sweet Thunder: The Life And Times Of Sugar Ray Robinson; Robinson is still considered (arguably) the greatest pound-for-pound boxer ever!
Moneyball producer Rachael Horovitz and Game Change writer Danny Strong will produce, and Oyelowo will executive producer. Haygood wrote a draft of the script and depending on who the director is, Strong might come on and do a rewrite.
All of this came together on the set of the Lee Daniels-directed The Butler, the film that Oyelowo stars in with Oprah Winfrey and Forest Whitaker. Strong wrote that script, based on Haygood’s Washington Post article, and the three of them found the beats of the boxing movie.
Sweet Thunder chronicles Robinson’s exploits with an emphasis on an intriguing aspect of the fighter’s early career. Despite being the class of his field in the welterweight and later middleweight class, Robinson spent too long watching inferior fighters get title matches, boxers that he’d whipped soundly in non-title fights. The reason: boxing was controlled by organized crime, and Robinson declined to get in bed with them, and refused to throw a fight. Robinson helped expose that seedy underbelly of the business.
Stay tuned, RC will keep you updated with production news, trailers and release dates!
