And the hits just keep coming for Anthony Mackie, who seems to be lining up one high-profile gig after another. He's already part of the Marvel Universe as Falcon in Captain America: The Winter Soldier; he's part of John Hillcoat's incredible Triple Nine cast, there's the Christmas comedy he signed up for alongside Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and only recently Mackie agreed to play Jimi Hendrix in a new film. And now he's developing a biopic that will see him as groundbreaking Olympic athlete, Jesse Owens.
Mackie is putting together a still-untitled film on Owens that he would star in and produce alongside his We Are Marshall and 10 Years screenwriter, Jamie Linden. Penning the screenplay will be George Olson, chronicling the story of Owens, the track legend who won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, squashing Adolf Hitler's claims of Aryan supremacy in the process.
There are a number of Owens films in the works but if Mackie gets his rolling he'll have a leg up on the competition. Disney has one in the works from the writer of The King's Speech, while another directed by Stephen Hopkins has just finally gotten off the blocks. John Boyega had been set to star in Race, which Hopkins will direct from a script by Anna Waterhouse and John Shrapnel. Boyega dropped out when he signed on for Star Wars: Episode VII, and now his replacement has been found in Stephan James, a relative unknown with upcoming roles in Ava Duvernay's Selma and sports drama When the Game Stands Tall. [Deadline]
