Hailed as one of the greatest actors of our time for playing fictional characters such as Michael Corleone and Tony Montana, Al Pacino‘s latest role will reportedly involve a real life Greek tragedy of a name.
By way of the New York Post, a website called Deadline.com is reporting that the Academy Award-winning actor will play former Penn State Joe Paterno in an upcoming film. The movie will be based on Joe Posnanski‘s best-selling book “Paterno,” which was penned around the time the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal exploded on the State College campus and shook the university and the Nittany Lions football program to its very core.
The casting of Pacino, who played a head football coach in the movie “Any Given Sunday,” as Paterno has yet to be confirmed by anyone connected to the proposed film, although there have been rumblings for weeks that the actor has been pushing for the role.
Posnanski was given unfettered access to Paterno and his family last year, moving to Happy Valley as part of the process for what began as the definitive biography of one of the greatest coaches in the history of college sports and ended with the legend disgraced and his legacy tarnished. In November, Jerry Sandusky, Paterno’s former defensive coordinator, was indicted on dozens of counts related to the sexual abuse of young boys and was ultimately sentenced to what amounts to life in prison. Paterno was fired by the university shortly after the indictments were handed down and died of lung cancer just over two months later.
Just who would play Sandusky in the movie version of the book is unknown, although John Malkovich, who does cinematic creepiness as expertly as anyone, might be a good place to start the casting call.