The Academy-Award winning actor Anthony Hopkins will play Cus D’Amato in a forthcoming Mike Tyson biopic from Hollywood.
Hollywood’s fixation on boxing evidently lives on.
Trainer Cus D’Amato and his heavyweight protégé Mike Tyson, perhaps the sport’s most renowned and mythologized tandem, are poised to become the subject of a new sports biopic, “Cus and Mike.”
Oscar-winning actor Anthony Hopkins will star as D’Amato in the Patriot Pictures production, according to Deadline. The signing was revealed at the European Film Market in Berlin, where the 70th Berlinale is currently taking place.
The film will chronicle how D’Amato transformed Tyson from a wayward Brooklyn teenager into a fighting machine who would go on to become the youngest heavyweight world champion. D’Amato, however, passed away too soon to witness the achievement.
“I was fortunate to meet that guy,” Tyson once told NPR. “We were two guys who were ‘nothing’ who became something.”
In addition to Tyson, Cus D’Amato guided Floyd Patterson and Jose Torres to world titles. D’Amato was noted for developing the so-called peek-a-boo style of boxing.
The film will be directed by Nick Cassevetes (“The Notebook,” “John Q”). The script, penned by Desmond Nakano, is based on the book “Mike Tyson: Money, Myth, and Betrayal” by Montieth Illingworth.
“This is an absolute dream scenario for me,” Cassavetes told Deadline. “An opportunity to work with Sir Anthony in a movie about two of my all-time heroes, Cus D’Amato and Mike Tyson, the most ferocious … fighter who ever lived? In a story about father figures that disappear too soon? I’m in heaven.”
This is at least the third Hollywood project to focus on Tyson and D’Amato in recent years. Martin Scorsese and Jamie Foxx were reported to be involved in a biopic of the duo, but that film seems to have gone on to developmental hell. Bruce Willis was also linked to a similar project.
Hopkins, best known for his role as Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs,” is coming off an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor this year for his performance in the Netflix-produced film “The Two Popes.”
Shooting for “Cus and Mike” is scheduled to begin this summer.
