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“The Hunger Games'” Sam Claflin will star in a biopic about soccer legend Robin Friday.
Henry-Alex Rubin is directing from a screenplay which Julian Stone and Paolo Hewitt adapted from the biography “The Greatest Footballer You Never Saw: The Robin Friday Story”.
Claflin will play Friday, the controversial and wild English soccer player of the 1970s who died age 38. Despite his on-field fame, Friday was also known for his hedonistic lifestyle off the field.
Mike Young, Stone and Hewitt are producing with production scheduled for the fall.
“This will not just be a film about cheering a goal,” said Stone, “but about tears and laughs and music and silence and anger and love…because this working-class hero with outrageous talent lived it all. It was a time before the age of privileged athletes, a time when the fans lived next door to their heroes. As Robin Friday walked down the streets of the 70’s, everybody wanted to be him. But quite frankly, no one else had the balls.”
“Robin Friday’s legacy continues to live on today,” Barros said, “and is a story tailor-made for the big screen given the larger-than-life energy which Friday brought to the sport and his life. The talented Sam Claflin is the perfect actor to fill the shoes of this British legend due to his background in the sport prior to pursuing his acting career.”
