Parting from the brother with whom you could make literally any film either wishes, only to both end up directing sports biopics for A24––a tale as old as time. While Benny Safdie works with an unrecognizable Dwayne Johnson on The Smashing Machine, Josh Safdie has been prepping Marty Supreme, a biopic of ping pong legend Marty Reisman for which Timothée Chalamet is in final talks to lead and produce. [Variety]
From a script by co-written with regular collaborator Ronald Bronstein, Marty Supreme tells of Reisman’s career as a ping pong champion and, because this is a Safdie production, hustler who’d regularly win off bets. His astonishing career spanned 22 major titles between 1946 and 2002, five bronze medals at the World Table Tennis Championships, and the distinction of being “the oldest player to win an open national competition in a racket sport.” Although the thought of Chalamet in old-man make-up is nearly impossible to conjure up, details of the project’s exact scope aren’t yet clear.
For a little more sense of where Marty Supreme might go, watch a few videos on Reisman and of him in competition:
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