Jake Gyllenhaal has signed on to play Joe Namath in a biopic about the Hall of Fame quarterback.
Washington, Nov 28 : Jake Gyllenhaal has signed on to play Joe Namath in a biopic about the Hall of Fame quarterback.
The script for the Universal Pictures movie will be penned by David Hollander once the writer's strike in Hollywood is over.
In the producer's bandwagon is Mad Chance's Andrew Lazar, with Jimmy Walsh, who runs Namanco Prods., on as exec producer, reports E! Online.
Namath became the first football player to achieve rock-star status even though other quarterbacks racked up bigger lifetime stats.
The pic will tell the story of how he became Broadway Joe, the New York Jets quarterback who became a '60s cultural figure.
Namath put the American Football League (AFL) on equal footing with the National Football League (NFL), paved the way to a merger and helped establish football as a TV sport.
What is extraordinary about him is that he accomplished all this on knees so bad that draft board doctors refused to send him to Vietnam for fear that they would give out on the battlefield.
ANI