Three days of Steve Harvey's life to become a major motion picture

Earlier this week we were lamenting the fact that the biopic well had apparently run so dry that they’re just fully remaking classic ones. This was an uncharitable underestimation of Hollywood, where anything is fodder for future biopics. Even a brief three-day period in the life of our most recent Family Feud host can become a biopic if you dare to dream outside the mainstream. Like death, the biopic eventually comes for us all, and the time for a Steve Harvey biopic has come. 

According to Deadline, Objectively Good Media is developing an authorized Steve Harvey biopic called Seventy-Two “centers on a transformative 72-hour period, ahead of a career-defining performance for Harvey at the legendary Apollo Theatre in 1993,” per the synopsis. “The film will provide audiences an intimate look at the perseverance and challenges that defined Harvey’s career. At age 26, Harvey left a secure sales job to pursue a career in comedy, facing numerous obstacles along the way. However, by 36, he was confronting a period of self-doubt and personal struggles as he prepared for the performance that would alter his career trajectory. OGM conceptualized and brought the idea to Harvey and East 112.”

Steve Harvey wouldn’t have been our first guess for contemporary comedian biopic, but he’s been at this a long time and has several books and stand-up specials to draw from as adaptable material. (Some of it has already been adapted, even!) So, why not? Time-constraint biopics are also very in right now: Jeremy Allen White is playing Bruce Springsteen specifically in the brief few weeks of making Nebraska. An even closer analog to the Harvey movie is the upcoming Saturday Night, which tracks the 90 minutes before the airing of the first-ever episode of Saturday Night Live. In fact, (comedy) icons preparing for a career-defining performance might be the next big trend in Hollywood—you heard it here first.