Jamie Foxx has wanted to play Mike Tyson for years now, and the project is finally getting off the ground. That’s according to Foxx himself, who confirmed the green light during an Instagram Live appearance with restauranteur Mark Birnbaum.

From Entertainment Weekly:

“It’s a definitive yes,” Foxx said. “Look, doing biographies is a tough thing. Sometimes it takes 20 years to get them done. But we officially got the real ball rolling.”

Foxx also teased some of the details of the film, saying he hopes to depict the “different lives” of the boxing legend. “We want to show, everybody evolves,” Foxx said. “I think when we lay the layers on Mike Tyson in this story, I think everybody from young and old will be able to understand this man’s journey.”

Foxx is certainly no stranger to biopics, having won an Oscar for playing Ray Charles in Ray. It wouldn’t even be his first boxing biopic, as Foxx also played cornerman Drew Bundini Brown in Ali,

 

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Foxx doesn’t sound like he’s training too hard for the role just yet, either:

“And then just the technology of how I’m gonna look, I guarantee you people will run up on me in the street, and ask for autographs, and think that I’m Mike,” he added, noting that he is undergoing a strict training regimen to achieve the physical transformation to portray Tyson at the height of his career. “Every other day, I do 60 pull-ups, we do 60 dips, we do 100 push-ups,” Foxx said, quipping, “I ain’t got no calf muscles, so we might have to get some prosthetics for that.” (The vocal transformation won’t be a problem: Foxx also shows off a pitch-perfect Tyson impression in the episode.)

Tyson’s is certainly a fascinating story, but any film about him will certainly have to reckon with things like his conviction and prison time for raping a teenager, along with various other legal issues. If a movie is going to be made, though, Foxx is excellent casting, and having stuck with the project for more than half a decade, it’s obviously a role he wants to play. You might even say it’s a role he’s really hoping to sink his teeth into.

[EW]

About Jay Rigdon

Jay is a columnist at Awful Announcing. He is not a strong swimmer. He is probably talking to a dog in a silly voice at this very moment.