Professional beard-haver Leonardo DiCaprio last dipped his toes into the pool of film production as the executive behind Virunga, a call-to-arms doc about gorilla preservation that snagged Netflix a pivotal Oscar nomination at the ceremony back in February. Today brings news of a new project for Leo the Producer. No, not that Leo the producer. But like Mel Brooks’ producer named Leo, his latest efforts will pair him with an absurd man characterized by over-the-top schemes to con unwitting Americans out of yachtloads of money: Michael Bay!
The unlikely pair has joined forces, THR reports, to executive-produce a film about the Rwandan cycling team. Neither man will be involved with the picture in a more direct capacity than producer; the project’s already taken on a director in Orlando von Einsiedel, Leo’s helmer from Virunga. Though the THR item doesn’t explicitly state it at any point, scattered lines about scripts and leading men seem to suggest that this newest project will be a narrative film instead of a documentary. Despite the documentarian hire and the film’s true-story subject matter, it’ll be a fiction film.
Though the subject at hand should provide them with ample material for dramatics. The film centers on the Rwandan cycling team, but begins with the earlier days of its leader, an American biker by the name of Jacques Boyer. In the U.S., Boyer was an odd bird; subsisting mainly on a steady diet of nuts and berries, the Seventh-Day Adventist racked up wins in 40 professional races by age 32. It was at that point that things took a turn south, as Boyer was pushed out of a company he helped found. Things went from bad to unspeakably worse shortly after, when Boyer was imprisoned for sexual conduct with a minor.
Like so many white people in times of personal crisis, Boyer fled North America to do some soul-searching, eventually winding up in Rwanda to provide aid to those affected by the horrific genocides of the ’90s. There, he gathered a team of six locals and trained them for glory, eventually bringing them to races around the globe. (One cyclist, Adrien Niyonshuti, overcame the death of his siblings during the genocide to push himself all the way to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.) It’s one of those inspirational stories that Hollywood so loves, where a white person teaches a group of nonwhite people to be better. Maybe whoever ends up playing Boyer can take some pointers from Kevin Costner (McFarland, USA) or Jon Hamm (Million Dollar Arm). Or, like, form a support group.