The Guardian have a nice write up about the number of football (soccer – I shall translate my language for you non-Europeans) movies that are in development. I was actually surprised by how many.
Obviously we have Goal, we all know about this and we talked about Beckham being pulled from the movie earlier.
Goal! hopes to have global appeal by showing the fortunes of a Latino player from LA going to the Premiership. A sequel in the Spanish Liga will be filmed this year and the trilogy will end with its hero at next year’s World Cup. The screenplay was written by the Auf Wiedersehen Pet veterans Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais, and Danny Cannon, who directed Judge Dredd, is now in charge after the more celebrated director Michael Winterbottom was removed from the project for his “creative differences”.
Oooh…my hackles raised at that. Judge Dredd? Mmmmm. Let’s move on! It has the backing though, with both Adidas and Fifa on board, interesting that they are mentioned that way round in the story too. Money before the governing body. However what really catches your eye is the fact that it is a trilogy, and that it’s all scoped out already. The machine begins.
Spike Lee, oh yes, Spike Lee, is also involved in another football movie called The Goal. He’s executive producing, the title is different to the previous movie, he’s not in Goal. (Hey, I thought it was funny!)
a $16m picture executive-produced by the occasional Arsenal fan Spike Lee – a footballer from the slums of Rio (played by the sitcom star Mario Lopez) goes to the US, where he becomes the world’s best player.
They both have some serious talent, although this shows how out of date the article is, they still mention Beckham. However, Shearer and Zidane are both in Goal, while Lee is trying to get hold of the Brazilian team for his movie.
It’s not all serious though, comedy man of the moment is getting his boot in…
…the world of soccer moms – the suburban junior leagues – is an established part of the cultural landscape. In Kicking & Screaming, to be released in September, this milieu will become the setting of a Hollywood movie for the first time. The comedy is a vehicle for Will Ferrell, who plays the coach of a team in competition with another team run by Robert Duvall, himself no stranger to football films having played the coach of a small Scottish team in 2000’s The Cup (also known as A Shot at Glory) alongside Ally McCoist.
For this movie, and indeed all the movies mentioned so far, they realise the potential for embarrassment and have hired professional footballers either infront of the camera, or behind as technical advisors. Simon Clifford the boss of a Leeds-based chain of soccer schools, makes an interesting point. He was responsible for teaching Keira Knightly her tricks in Bend it Like Beckham.
“One of the reasons football films have been embarrassing is that they hired actors who couldn’t play football,” says Clifford. “Either you cast people who are already footballers – which is what Jefferies has done – or you invest the time in preparation. With Keira we spent four months training every day.”
Now, not really being a football fan, this one really tickles me, and it should do for all those US readers.
The US football team’s most remarkable victory happened more than half a century ago, when they beat England 1-0 at the 1950 World Cup in Brazil. That match is the subject of the Game of Their Lives, due out in the US in April. The movie begins with Patrick Stewart, as the veteran journalist Dent McSkimming, reminiscing about the match to the real-life teenage football prodigy Freddy Adu.
Oh yes. I would pay to see that movie in a really expensive cinema at least three hundred times. England getting beaten by the US.
Further snippets of movies in development are given:
The Bafta-winner Walter Salles is developing the script of Linha de Passe, about four brothers, one of whom becomes a footballer…It was announced this month that the Berlin film festival and the German FA will produce a portmanteau film about football including vignettes directed by Kenneth Branagh, Emir Kusturica, Jean-Jacques Beneix and Werner Herzog, to be shown as part of the World Cup celebrations next year.
Big Branagh fan, but football? Perhaps it might take the style of Love’s Labour’s Lost, mixing Shakespeare with football?
All sounds really impressive, but is there much story to them, or is it just seen as an excellent market for making money? The whole article is peppered with clues to this very point.
The big movie to float to the surface of this sea of footie films, could well be the next movie from Elijah Wood entitled Hooligans. Dougie Brimson is the writer of the screenplay and through his books on Football hooligans, he has become the UK’s leading authority on the subject, even joining a Government Committee on the matter.
…Lexi Alexander, whose film about hooliganism, The Yank, is due for release in August. “Football is a great environment for a movie because there is such passion for it and so much adrenalin.” In The Yank – which will be called Hooligans in the US – Elijah Wood plays the role of a Harvard dropout who comes to London and gets involved with a West Ham gang. It was filmed at Upton Park, where Wood endeared himself to members of the local “firms”. The author and hooly expert Cass Pennant worked as a consultant: “I had a few lads who would take the piss out of the hobgoblin. But he won them over. He was very serious. His fans will be horrified to see their idol covered in blood.”
This reeks of a hard, gritty movie which has the potential to really make an impact in the cinema. I think this could be the football movie that beats the rest and rises above them, something I’m sure Fifa would rather not be the case. Yet, it will have some interesting things to say, and probably very important too. Keep yours eyes on this one.
