Glen Powell is set to star as legendary New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig in an untitled biopic directed by Richard Linklater for Universal Pictures.
The film is being produced by ‘Saturday Night Live’ creator Lorne Michaelsand Erin David through Broadway Video’s first-look deal with Universal. Glen Powell will also produce alongside Dan Cohen under his Barstorm banner, while Linklater is in talks to produce through his own Detour Filmproduction. The script is being written by Simon Rich, a longtime SNLwriter who also penned the upcoming Sam Altman biopic ‘Artificial’.
Lou Gehrig nicknamed ‘The Iron Horse’ for his durability, Lou Gehrig played his entire 17 year career at first base for the Yankees, from 1923 to 1939, after attending Columbia University. He was part of the legendary 1927 ‘Murderer’s Row’ lineup alongside Babe Ruth, and set a then record for consecutive games played at 2,130, a mark that stood for over 50 years until Cal Ripken Jr. broke it in 1995.
Over his career, Lou Gehrig won six World Series titles and was named American League MVP twice, finishing with a lifetime batting average of .340, 493 home runs, and nearly 2,000 runs batted in. In 1939, Gehrig was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a disease that would later become widely known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
In the classic 1942 drama ‘Pride of the Yankees’, the emotional farewell speech that Lou delivered at Yankee Stadium that same year is included, telling the crowd he considered himself “the luckiest man on the face of the earth”, a line still remembered as one of the most iconic moments in sports history. Lou Gehrig died in 1941 at just 37 years old. In 2021, Major League Baseball established June 2 as Lou Gehrig Day, an annual event honouring his legacy and raising awareness for ALS research.
This marks the third collaboration between Glen Powell and Richard Linklater, following the 2016 college baseball comedy ‘Everybody Wants Some!!’ and their 2023 Netflix film ‘Hit Man’, which the two also co-wrote together. Richard Linklater, known for his love of baseball on screen, also directed the 2005 ‘Bad News Bears’ remake and the documentary ‘Inning by Inning: A Portrait of a Coach’, making this new project a natural continuation of his long-running interest in the sport.
The plot details of the movie has not been revealed yet, though some reports suggest Lou Gehrig’s teammate Babe Dahlgren, the player who eventually replaced him at first base in 1939, is expected to have an important role in the story. Lou Gehrig’s life was previously dramatized in the 1942 film ‘The Pride of the Yankees’, starring Gary Cooper, which received 11 Academy Award nominations and remains the only major film made about him to date. That film leaned heavily on Gehrig’s off-field humility and his relationship with his wife Eleanor, and it remains to be seen how closely Linklater’s version will follow that same structure or take a different approach to his story, more than 80 years later.
Glen Powell will next appear in Judd Apatow’s ‘The Comeback King’, releasing early next year through Universal, and in Warner Bro’s ‘The Great Beyond’, alongside Jenna Ortega. He is also set to return for a second season of Hulu’s football comedy series ‘Chad Powers’. Powell has built a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most in demand leading men in recent years, with hits including “Top Gun: Maverick, Anyone But You, and Twisters”, making him a fitting choice to lead a major studio biopic like this one.
With Glen Powell noe attached to play Lou Gehrig and Richard Linklaterset to direct from Simon Rich’s script, the long awaited biopic looks to bring fresh attention to one of baseball’s most enduring and emotional stories. No release date or additional casting has been announced yet.
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