Shia Gets Served
Jason from MNPP here, taking a look at today's big news out of everybody's favorite Oscar baiting genre, the bio-pic - famous actor slash shit-stirrer Shia LaBeouf is set to play famous athlete slash shit-stirrer John McEnroe in Borg/McEnroe, which will tackle the long-term rivalry between Mr. McEnroe and the underwear-salesman slash Swede Bjorn Borg. Playing Borg is the actor Sverrir Gudnason, who I am not familiar with, but he sure does have some big tiny shorts to fill...
(Cue my childhood crush on Borg rearing its head.)
Stellan Skarsgård is also in the film, playing Borg's coach, and Danish director Janus Metz (Armadillo) is directing. Anyway Shia might maybe be rebounding? I actually think he's given his best performances over the past couple of years in the middle of what did seem to be a bit of a public breakdown. He's managed to channel it into his work in interesting ways, that is. And there aren't many movies in the world right now that I need to see more than I need to see Andrea Arnold's American Honey, and the word out of Cannes on that one only made that more true. And playing John McEnroe seems like a crazy good match of actor and subject. What do we think?
Reader Comments (10)
Cast Lindsay Lohan as McEnroe's love interest and you've got me!
Between this and the Battle of the Sexes movie, tennis biopics are in.
Cast Matthias Schoenaerts as Borg and then we're talking!
You can't bring up Bjorn Borg and expect coherent thoughts here, just random daydreaming...
Coming soon... "Wimbledon 2: Match Point" A Murder Mystery Romantic Comedy from 'Woody Loncraine'
I'll wait for "The Pete Sampras Story"
YES MORE TENNIS-RELATED FILMS YES.
I don't see Shia as McEnroe nor Borg. It doesn't look or feel right.
When I first read this story I imagined it was the Star Trek crossover we've all been waiting for:
McEnroe vs The Borg
Now that's a tennis related movie I'd sign up to watch.
Just me?
Omg, John MacEnroe is boring. All that whipping himself into a rage to try to create energy. It's taken until the last few years, watching Roger Federer, for him to regret that, and think that he could have played years longer if he hadn't worn himself out emotionally.
Federer did the McEnroe approach in his early years, and he lost all the time. When he switched over to being cooler and collected, in the Borg model, he started to gain control of his game.
I'd rather see pure fiction tennis, like a return of the Nicolai Coster-Waldau character from the movie Wimbledon (oh, how I loved him). If it's about a real tennis player, why not one of the interesting ones, like Evonne Goolagong?