“I just went in with Paramount with Mike Tyson,” Foxx said. “So I’m going to do the Mike Tyson story. Listen, to be in the same room pitching Mike Tyson to Paramount, Mike Tyson is on one side, I’m on the other side and doing Mike Tyson at the same time. And Martin Scorsese at the helm. This will be the first boxing movie that Martin Scorsese has done since Raging Bull.”
When the film was announced last summer, Tyson himself told IGN of Scorsese’s potential involvement, and also said the plan is to utilize the same technology used in 2008’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to allow Foxx to portray Tyson at all stages of his career.
“Iron” Mike Tyson achieved popularity in his heyday as a boxer, which took him to the very top of the sport, as well as for a fall from grace that included six years in prison for rape as well as subsequent charges of driving while drunk and drug possession after the death of his daughter and filing for bankruptcy. Tyson published a best-selling memoir and performed a one-man show, both titled “Undisputed Truth,” although it is unknown if either have formed the basis of Winter’s screenplay.
Michael Jai White previously played Iron Mike in a 1995 HBO biopic titled “Tyson,” while Star Wars: The Force Awakens star John Boyega was chosen to lead a Spike Lee-directed HBO series “Da Brick” loosely based on Mike Tyson’s life in 2011, but the show never got off the ground.
(Photo Credit: WENN)
