OK, non-Yankee readers, we know you don't care about American 'football' but try to forget that for the length of this story. Got your shoulder pads ready? OK. Jake Gyllenhaal is lined up to play American football legend Joe Namath, the game's first modern superstar.
Namath was a '60s cultural icon who played for the New York Jets, where the owner paid him a record salary and turned him loose on New York to raise hell in the night clubs and spend his dough on fur coats and women. Namath became an advertising magnet, taking his league, the American Football League, from red-headed stepchild levels to NFL competitor status, leading to a merger between the two. He also helped turn 'football' into a major TV force, and made good on his personal guarantee to beat the Baltimore Colts (the favourites) in Super Bowl III - all on knees so bad that he was turned down for the Vietnam draft.
Don't expect to see this for a while - David Hollander is set to write the script, but only when the WGA strike finishes, and in the meantime Gyllenhaal is set to finish Brothers with Tobey Maguire and Natalie Portman, and (more excitingly) to work with Doug Liman on an as-yet untitled project about moon exploration.
But what do you think, readers? Will any film about American football ever make a dent in this country? Or are you, like us, far more intrigued by that moon project?