There are many famous actors who moonlight as die-hard sports fans, and Bill Murray is one of them. The legendary comedian and Saturday Night Live star grew up in Illinois as an extremely passionate fan of the Chicago Cubs baseball team, and was one of the many who celebrated loudly last year when the team won the World Series for the first time in 108 years. And now that a movie is being made about that event, it only makes sense that Murray would be involved, and there is now talk that he could wind up playing manager Joe Maddon in the feature.
Deadline has the latest news on Teammate, which began developing back in late March. The write up notes that Bill Murray's deal with the film is hardly set, and it's not quite clear yet if it will happen - but the project did make one recent solid acquisition. It's been confirmed that the project will be directed by Shane Abbess, who actually hails from Australia, but is apparently a "major baseball fan."
The David Ross and Don Yaeger-authored book Teammate: My Journey In Baseball And A World Series For The Ages is being adapted for the feature by newcomer screenwriters Ram Getz and John Corcoran. The story will center on Ross, who was a journeyman catcher in Major League Baseball for 13 years before ending his career with a two-year stint with the Cubs. He is on record as the oldest player to ever hit a home run in a World Series Game 7, and it was a scoring drive that wound up securing the team's incredible victory.
At the age of 67, Bill Murray is a bit too old to be starring as one of the Cubs players in Teammate, but Joe Maddon could be perfect, age-appropriate role for him to play in the film. The feature could potentially be his first non-cameo live-action role since 2015 when he stared in Cameron Crowe's Aloha and Barry Levinson's Rock The Kasbah. He'll next be back on the big screen in a Wes Anderson movie early next year, as he provides a voice for one of the characters in the upcoming stop-motion animated Isle of Dogs (which just launched its first trailer last week).
Shane Abbess first broke out as a director with his 2007 horror fantasy feature Gabriel, but more recently directed the sci-fi action-adventure film The Osiris Child in 2016. At this point in time its not entirely clear when he may start getting to work on Teammate, but we should start getting a better idea when more casting announcements start to crop up. Between now and then, stay tuned for more updates on the project, and answer the poll below to tell us what you think of Bill Murray possibly playing Joe Maddon.
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