One of the biggest controversies of the moment is the doping scandal surrounding celebrated bicyclist, cancer survivor, and Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and now J.J. Abrams wants to take that story and put it up on the big screen. Abrams' company Bad Robot and Paramount Pictures - with whom they've collaborated on projects like Star Trek and Super 8 - are reteaming to make a film about the athlete, having just purchased the rights to the Juliet Macur book Cycle Of Lies: The Fall Of Lance Armstrong.
Deadline, which broke the story about the developing project, says that Macur is a sports reporter for the New York Times who has followed the length of Armstrong's career, "through the cyclist’s recovery from deadly cancer to his capturing seven Tour de France [titles]." While the cyclist has been plagued by accusations about cheating for years now, only recently did he do an interview with Oprah Winfrey to come clean about his performance enhancing drug use.
The site notes that this actually isn't the first project about Armstrong that's entered development, though it is the first that's come up since his confession. There has been talk about a possible moving going back to 2005 and in 2009 it was reported that Sony Pictures had hired Hunger Games director Gary Ross to pen a screenplay about the athlete. That project, which also had Jake Gyllenhaal attached to star, is currently dead, but it's possible that it could come back due to recent developments.
Do you think now is the right time to start making a Lance Armstrong biopic? Is it something you'd be interested in seeing, particularly if it's coming from Abrams and Bad Robot? Let us know in the comments below.
