Movies about athletes come and go through time to varying degrees of success, and yet the film and television industry will likely never stop making them. For one, they’re cheap to produce. For two, people loves sports, and the rise to stardom of the world’s elite athletes are often compelling tales with almost always happy endings.
Enter Zlatan.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic is one of greatest footballers in the world, but his life off the pitch is why he would make an amazing protagonist in a footy biopic. With Cristiano Ronaldo’s feature coming this year, Zlatan was asked about the likelihood of his own movie being made. Via Goal.com:
“Everything is about what I want to do. If I want to. So we’ll have to see,” he told reporters.
“It would have been fun if something came around. But we have to see, a lot of other things have to click.
“You can’t just say ‘I want to’ and somebody tells you ‘we can do it’. But discussions are being held.”
Discuss faster. I’m sensing more than just a biopic. We’re looking at the world’s next great action star, with the backstory to boot.
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Born in Sweden to a Bosnian father and Croatian mother, Zlatan started playing the game as a boy and drew interest from professional clubs before almost quitting to, as the story goes, “work on the docks.”
His career blossomed, however, leading him to some of the top clubs around Europe and international acclaim. Only, he didn’t always play nicely with others, routinely squabbling with teammates and coaches.
Hell, the man’s name, which is Slavic in origin and means “golden,” is trademarked. He has a black belt in taekwondo and he’s fluent in five languages. He tattooed the names of 50 starving people around the world on his body to show support for the United Nations World Food Program.
He is the most interesting man in the world. How is there not a movie about him already?
The Goal.com article tried to offer suggestions for who would play Zlatan in this potential movie, offering Adrien Brody, John Hamm, Jean Dujardin, Christian Bale, Joaquin Phoenix, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Benedict Cumberbatch as options other than, of course, Zlatan himself.
Outside of Zlatan, none of those names would work. Save Gordon-Levitt, the group is at least five years older than the Swedish star and Jon Hamm and Christian Bale are one the list for no other reason than they’re people we’ve heard of who have dark hair.
The answer is Zlatan. Well, the answer is Adam Driver for sure, but outside of the Star Wars and Girls star, the answer is Zlatan.
With the Messi movie out in 2014 and the Ronaldo movie coming out this year, 2016 is paved for the tale of Zlatan. This could be the next superhero genre—creating an Avengers like super group of footballers who can work together to save the world.
We could call them The Galácticos. No, wait, too many Barcelona connections here for that. We’ll think of something.
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About Dan Levy
Dan Levy has written a lot of words in a lot of places, most recently as the National Lead Writer for Bleacher Report. He was host of The Morning B/Reakaway on Sirius XM's Bleacher Report Radio for the past year, and previously worked at Sporting News and Rutgers University, with a concentration on sports, media and public relations.