Hollywood goes for "Fifty-nine in '84"
Kirker Butler, a co-executive producer and writer on Fox series “The Cleveland Show,” has optioned movie rights to Edward Achorn’s “Fifty-Nine in ’84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had,” the Hollywood Reporter reveals.
“Butler said he’s not a baseball buff, just a fan of good stories and good characters. He sparked to the rambunctious Radbourn, who among other achievements is purported to be the first person in history to be photographed flipping the bird and who fell in love with a local madam to whom he pretended to be married,” the newspaper reported.
“The goal is to make the best movie, not to find a movie for me to write,” he said.
The book has won rave reviews from the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, New York Post and other publications, as well as from best-selling historians Gordon Wood and Joseph Ellis.
Reviewers have repeatedly said “Fifty-nine in ’84” would make a great movie, and Web sites have already speculated about Megan Fox in the role of Carrie Stanhope.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune compared it to Seabiscuit. Baseball America wrote: “There’s certainly enough conflict, drama, and romance to make a great movie. They won’t even need a Hollywood ending. Radbourn provided it himself.”
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