With this year’s World Cup slowly fading into memory like a distant vuvuzela, and as a nation we stop looking back at such a dismal performance and start looking ahead to the future, Hollywood might actually be gearing up a new film about football, Slide, with Gerard Butler producing and now pondering the lead role.
And yes, by football, we mean proper footie, not the padded mutant version of rugby so enjoyed in the US (that sound you hear is the pitchfork-carrying mob on the way to the apartment of our man in LA for writing this).
But Slide has a bit of a history in development, since it started out as a baseball comedy called Confessions of a Little League Coach. The concept is being snipped and tweaked and will now focus on a troubled father with a bad reputation trying to get back into his son’s good graces by coaching his football team. Problem is, he’s also a charming rogue, who gets on rather too well with the soccer moms.
Seven Pounds director Gabriele Muccino has apparently been itching to direct the film, even as it switched sports. But he’s still trying to find room in his schedule.
Butler, meanwhile, has been on board for a while via his Evil Twins company, but his fellow producers, including Jonathan Mostow, are now taking to him about pulling on the coach's tracksuit.
It’ll stay as a rumour until he actually signs, but it could be time to make the studios pay for the likes of that awful Will Ferrell comedy Kicking & Screaming…