Caffeinated Clint
Update : Legendary Pictures has announced that Harrison Ford has accepted the offer to play Branch Rickey in the Rickey/Jackie Robinson info-pic “42”. In addition, Chadwick Boseman (“The Express”) has been cast as Robinson.
Here’s the press release :
Burbank, CA – December 9, 2011 – Legendary Pictures announced today that it has cast Chadwick Boseman and Harrison Ford to star in the company’s film based upon history’s most celebrated baseball figure, Jackie Robinson.
Boseman will depict the iconic baseball star, paying tribute to the legacy and impact Robinson made when he became the first African American Major League Baseball player.
Ford will star as Branch Rickey, the innovative Major League Baseball executive who is best known for breaking MLB’s color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson to a minor league contract in 1945. Two years later, at the start of the 1947 major league baseball season, Robinson was signed to the Brooklyn Dodgers major league baseball team with the help of Rickey. Rickey was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1967.
Chadwick Boseman is best known for his performance in Universal Pictures’ THE EXPRESS. Boseman also just completed a lead in the independent feature KILL HOLE. On television he was a regular on the NBC
Previously…
He’s notoriously picking about what he does (“Yes Clint, I saw Six Days, Seven Nights. I can tell”) so there’s no guarantee he’ll do it but Harrison Ford has been asked to play Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey in ”42”, says Deadline. This is the same flick Robert Redford was circling at one stage, with the Sundance chief planning to play the Rickey role.
The Brian Helgeland (“A Knight’s Tale”) directed drama would tell of how Rickey and Jackie Robinson eradicated segregation in baseball in 1947.
This is a movie that could not only play to Ford’s strengths but encompasses a story worth telling. Hopefully Ford realizes those factors while the ‘thinking music’ plays.
