Variety reports that Jamie Foxx is attached to star in a movie about the life of Mike Tyson, the boxer who went from feared heavyweight champion to just feared, as a three-year prison term for rape somehow marked just the beginning of a tumultuous life in and out of the ring, until Tyson at last learned the modern way of capitalizing on being a trainwreck. Foxx’s attachment to the project was first leaked by Tyson himself, who told The Daily Mirror (via The Guardian) that Foxx would portray him at different ages with the help of CGI. “Now they have this new animation—because you know Jamie’s pretty much my age so he can’t portray me but they have this new system,” Tyson said, suggesting technology has certainly come a long way since Foxx played Carl “The Tooth” Williams on In Living Color.
Variety makes no mention of CGI—nor does it rope in Martin Scorsese, who Tyson also said would be involved. However, reportedly Scorsese’s Wolf Of Wall Street collaborator Terence Winter is attached to pen the screenplay, writing another tale of late ’80s/early ’90s excess colored by cocaine and domestic violence, and centered on another controversial figure who eventually found a way to profit on being hated.
For his part, Foxx told the hosts of Live With Michael And Kelly this year that he had been talking with Tyson about the project. So at the very least, Foxx obviously no longer subscribes to his 2002 declaration, “Mike Tyson: I ain’t fuckin’ with him.” Very likely he may soon be fuckin’ with him for a big-screen biopic.