Caffeinated Clint
With that “Dick Tracy” sequel still but a pipe dream at the Beatty estate, Al Pacino’s looking to fill some hours by playing former Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno, in a new film ICM Partners are shopping about this week.
The untitled biopic, telling of ”the man called JoePa by most students at Happy Valley”, will likely find a home fairly quickly, assumes Deadline.
The narrative arc of the movie that will be shopped is obvious. A man becomes the winningest coach in college football history and builds a powerhouse football program that turns him into a campus deity. When his former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky is revealed to be a pedophile and it comes out Paterno was told and helped hide the scandal, the coach was summarily fired. He died shortly after of cancer — and many feel of a broken heart — and the school had little choice but to raze a fabled statue of Paterno just as the NCAA dropped the hammer with sanctions against the school that included removal of Paterno’s wins going back to the cover-up. Sandusky was found guilty on 45 counts of sexual abuse against young boys and is expected to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Don’t matter who you cast in the thing, nor how good it is, a football movie’s a football movie… look for this one at your local supermarket rent-a-video box in Australia. The U.S, however, where football means more than family, will no doubt be making sure this gets a major wide theatrical release where it’ll be paraded atop of the box office for weeks on end.
