Jamie Foxx To Play Mike Tyson In Film Biopic

Ray star takes on another legendary icon in upcoming biopic.

Mike Tyson Jamie Foxx Having put on the specs and wobbly head for his Oscar-winning turn in 2005's Ray, Jamie Foxx is set to take on the role of another iconic, real life pop culture icon in a film about Mike Tyson. The guy from The Hangover, remember? Yeah, he used to be a boxer. And one with a...colourful life. Which means that Terence Winter, fellow Academy Award winner and creator of The Sopranos, is a screenwriter perfectly poised to get into the nitty-gritty of Tyson's ear-biting, prison-serving career. Foxx joins the as-yet-untitled film written by Winter, who just wrapped up penning Martin Scorsese's The Wolf Of Wall Street, and produced by Foxx's manager Rick Yorn. The boxer's life story has already been told in the 1995 TV movie and 2008 documentary - both called Tyson, rather unimaginatively - which focussed on both his time in and out the ring, not shying away from his prison convictions for rape, drink driving and drug possession. Or his daughter's death. Or his bankruptcy. Or his comments about Sarah Palin. Dude's lived a life. Despite a very public fall from grace following a stellar run that brought him to the top of the boxing game, Mike Tyson has been gaining some traction in the public eye once more thanks to cameos in the likes of The Hangover, where he sends up his tough guy image, along with a one-man in Las Vegas and on Broadway which fed into a bestselling memoir called Undisputed Truth. It's unclear which - if any - of these will form the source material for the Jamie Foxx film, but the Amazing Spider-Man 2 actor is gonna have to bulk up considerably to convincingly play the pugilist. Facial tattoo optional. Tyson, meanwhile, is in the process of making another surprising left turn by starring in an animated comedy show called Mike Tyson Mysteries. Announced at his past weekend's San Diego Comic-Con, the Adult Swim series will see a cartoon version of the boxer teaming up with his adoptive Korean daughter, a sex-mad alcoholic pigeon and the ghost of the Marquess of Queensberry to solve Scooby-Doo style crimes. So that's a thing that's happening. Which will probably in no way affect the Foxx movie.
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