Daniel Radcliffe and director James Watkins had moderate success working together last year on The Woman in Black, and they’ll be teaming up once again.
The pair will take on a different genre this time, however. Radcliffe will play Sebastian Coe in Gold, which will be based on the true story of the rivalry between Coe and Steve Ovett leading up to the 1980 Olympics. It sounds somewhat like Ron Howard’s Rush, except this time there won’t be cars.
Apart from the probably not as frequent as you remember quidditch scenes in the Harry Potter movies, this will be Radcliffe’s first foray into the sports genre. Radcliffe’s Coe is described as “obsessive and nurtured, is a quiet loner driven to the limit of endeavor by his ambitious father.” His rival, yet to be cast, is described as “effortless and natural, is a confident joker and outsider, fighting to prove himself in an elitist world.”
These descriptions sound quite a bit like the pair from Rush, incidentally. Radcliffe’s Coe is quiet and driven, and that reminds us quite a bit of Daniel Brühl’s Niki Lauda. Ovett being a jokester and effortless too, sounds a lot like Chris Hemsworth’s James Hunt. Whoever plays Ovett will likely need to have Hemsworth-like charm and screen presence.
The pair first raced in a cross country meet in 1972, eight years before what will be the climax of the film. Over the next decade, the two became the two most dominate runners in the sport.
The story is based on the book The Perfect Distance – Ovett and Coe: The Record-Breaking Rivalry. Here’s the description of the book from Amazon:
Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe presided over the golden era of British athletics. Between them they won three Olympic gold medals, two silvers, one bronze, and broke a total of twelve middle-distance records. As far apart as possible in terms of class and upbringing, their rivalry burned as intense on the track as away from it. The pendulum swung between the pair of them—each breaking the other’s records, and, memorably, triumphing in each other’s events in Moscow in 1980. The Perfect Distance is both a detailed re-creation and a fitting celebration of the greatest era of British athletics.
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