He has played a dying baseball player, a crazy fan and won an Oscar portraying boxer Jake LaMotta, now Robert DeNiro is set in the lead role as legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi.
Securing the rights through his estate and Vincent Lombardi, Jr. as well as the rights to the classic sports book, Instant Replay, written by former Packer great Jerry Kramer and Dick Schaap, the producing team of the NFL, ESPN Films, Chris Olsen and Andell Entertainment along with De Niro and Jane Rosenthal’s Tribeca Productions the story will chronicle Lombardi during the years he transformed the Green Bay Packers from the worst team in the National Football League into five-time NFL champions.
A core element of that story will be the long-standing rivalry that existed between Lombardi and legendary Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry, both of whom were assistants on the New York Giants team that lost the 1958 NFL Championship game. Friendly but always competitive, Lombardi and Landry’s coaching skills were undeniable, yet diametrically different in their personalities.
Appropriately, the story looks at the willingness to pay a price for greatness and climaxes with the memorable Ice Bowl when their teams battled in temperatures that reached 13 degrees below zero with Lombardi succeeding in his desire of winning an unprecedented and currently unmatched three consecutive NFL championships.
Designed for a theatrical release on the weekend between the AFC and NFC Conference Championships and the Super Bowl in 2012, the picture will be written by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (“Forrest Gump”, “The Insider”).
“Having an icon portray an icon on film is amazing, and with a writer as talented as Eric working on the script, the results could be magical for NFL fans,” said Ron Semiao, senior vice president, ESPN Films – Motion Pictures.
