EXCLUSIVE: After hitting a house run with their 2016 faculty baseball pic Everybody Wants Some!, Glen Powell and Richard Linklater are able to take the mound once more for an untitled Lou Gehrig movie at Universal. Powell will play the long-lasting New York Yankee, with Linklater hooked up to direct and Simon Rich writing.
Lifelong Yankee fan Lorne Michaels will produce alongside Erin David underneath Broadway Video’s first-look take care of Universal. Powell will produce alongside Dan Cohen in Barnstorm’s first-look take care of the studio. Linklater is in talks to provide via Detour Filmproduction.
Gehrig, thought-about one of many best baseball gamers of all time, is likely one of the twentieth century’s most revered sport figures thanks in nice half to his sturdiness that earned him the nickname “The Iron Horse.” The seven-time All-Star performed in a file 2,130 consecutive video games, a mark that was regarded as unreachable till Baltimore’s Cal Ripken topped it in 1998.
The first baseman performed his complete 17-year profession with the Yankees, profitable six World Series titles together with on the 1927 Yankees staff many imagine to be the best ever assembled. He gained the Triple Crown in 1934, hitting .363, with 49 house runs and 166 RBIs.
Gehrig’s games-played streak and profession would come to an abrupt halt in 1939, when he was identified with what ultimately can be referred to as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the neuromuscular illness now generally known as Lou Gehrig’s illness. He died in 1941 at age 37.
The Gehrig story is one Hollywood loves however has in some way solely been instructed as soon as, within the basic 1942 drama Pride of the Yankees, which starred Gary Cooper because the Hall of Famer. It included Gehrig’s iconic retirement speech at Yankee Stadium in his final public look (“For the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break,” Gehrig instructed the Yankee trustworthy. “Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”).
It is unknown what will probably be coated within the new movie, however sources say one in every of Gehrig’s teammates anticipated to have an necessary position within the movie is Babe Dahlgren, the person tasked with changing Gehrig at first base. There’s no manufacturing begin date but, however Powell plans to take a break after working nonstop for the previous year-plus. Expect each younger actor on the town to be chasing the Dahlgren half given the star energy hooked up to the undertaking.
Powell is an avid sports activities fan (particularly on the subject of his Texas Longhorns), so the Gehrig undertaking falls proper into his wheelhouse simply as he’s wrapping manufacturing on the second season of the Hulu soccer sequence Chad Powers.
Powell and Linklater most lately labored collectively on the 2024 Netflix comedy Hitman, and when this undertaking discovered its approach to the pair, it felt like the proper pic on which to reunite.
Senior EVP Production Development Erik Baiers will oversee the undertaking for Universal.
Powell’s relationship with Universal dates to his starring position in Twisters, which in 2024 overperformed and have become the most important opening for a pure catastrophe movie on the home field workplace; it grossed $267.8 million total within the U.S./Canada.
Barnstorm can also be producing The Comeback King, which Universal will distribute in theaters on February 5, 2027. Powell additionally has the J.J. Abrams pic The Great Beyond bowing fall of 2027.
Rich most lately penned Luca Guadagnino’s function Artificial. The movie, starring Andrew Garfield as OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, lately landed at Neon with plans to bow this yr. He additionally wrote An American Pickle, starring Seth Rogen, and was a employees author at Pixar. His credit embrace Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons, and he’s the creator of the TV exhibits Man Seeking Woman and Miracle Workers.
Powell is represented by CAA, The Initiative Group and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole. Linklater is repped by CAA and Cinetic Media. Rich is represented by CAA and Eastman and Eastman.
