When speaking to eWrestlingNews about the progress of his biopic film, Kurt Angle gave some insight into the casting process and his hopes for who would portray himself as well as John du Pont.
According to Angle, the plans are to adapt his life’s story in two films, with the first focusing on his amateur wrestling career and the second revolving around his professional wrestling career.
“We are in the beginning stages of it, but we got the script almost finished. We’re getting investors right now. We’re going to pick the cast in the next two months. So this is going to be a great movie, about my Olympic story. And, that’s the cool thing about it is we’re going to do two movies, actually. There was just too much content to do my whole life. So these directors, Ian and Eshom Nelms, who are really talented directors. They directed movies like Fatman starring Mel Gibson and Red Right Hand starring Orlando Bloom, uh, many other great films. They, they decided that they wanted to break it into two. And so the first one would be up until the Olympics when I won the Olympic gold medal. The second one would be about my WWE and pro wrestling career.”
Angle says it will have a similar feel to the Rocky franchise with a touch of The Fighter and The Iron Claw—but with less depressing tragedy.
When asked by our interviewer, Casey Salengo, about who Angle would like to see cast as himself in the film, Angle tossed out the name of Gabriel LaBelle, most recently seen portraying Lorne Michaels in the SNL film Saturday Night. To play John du Pont of Team Foxcatcher, they’re hoping to get Batman and Beetlejuice star Michael Keaton for the role.
“Right now, what I’m thinking, he’s a Canadian actor, he’s upcoming, really getting popular right now. He’s got a lot of steam. His name’s Gabe LaBelle. He did the movie, Saturday Night, the movie about the Saturday Night Live talent. Yeah. So, he’s done some really great movies and he he’s really made coming into his own. And I think what we really need is big time actors in this movie. And, we also got, you know, we’re pitching to Michael Keaton to play John Du Pont. But we got a lot of people in mind that we have and hopefully it’ll turn out really good.”
On his thoughts about the Foxcatcher film itself: “Yeah, it was very accurate. What I didn’t like about it is they had some kind of insinuation that John du Pont and Mark Schultz were like, gay. Yeah, that, that, no, not even close. Mark was really pissed off about that, actually. But, um, I have a lot of respect for Mark and Dave. They’re, they’re both my idols. I grew up, uh, loving both of them. And, um, so I keep in touch with Mark ever since Dave passed away. And, uh, we have a great relationship.”
What do you think about Gabriel LaBelle possibly playing Kurt Angle in this biopic film? Drop your thoughts in the comments below!
