'Star Trek' director to make Armstrong flick
J.J. Abrams is to make a movie about disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong.
The 'Star Trek' director and his Paramount Pictures partner Bryan Burk have snapped up the screen rights for 'Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong', a proposal for a book set to be penned by New York Times reporter Juliet Macur, who has covered the drugs cheat for more than a decade, Deadline.com reports.
Matt Damon is being talked about to portray Armstrong – who has been stripped off all the titles he won between 1999 to 2005 after it emerged he was engaged in a huge doping scandal – in the Bad Robot project.
Sony Pictures were previously eyeing up an Armstrong movie with Jake Gyllenhaal tipped to take on the titular role, but they dropped the project when the seven-time Tour de France winner began his descent from grace.
Armstrong's good friend Matthew McConaughey has also been talked about to play the sportsman in a biopic, but the 'Magic Mike' star recently admitted he was "p***ed off" with the disgraced cyclist when he heard about the doping scandal.
He said: "My first reaction was I was p***ed off. I was mad. I then got kind of sad for him. First off, I had a part of me that took it kind of personally, which I think a lot of people have.
"For him, it was impersonal because he was living a lie. It was a whole unanimous facade he had to carry around.
"What I realised is that those of us that took that personally, like, 'Oh, he lied to me,' it's not true. What I mean by this is, what was he supposed to do? Call me to the side and go, 'Hey man, I did it but don't tell anybody.' Then I would have really had a reason to be p***ed off at him, going, 'You want me to walk around holding this?' "
