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EXCLUSIVE: After hitting a home run with their 2016 college baseball pic Everybody Wants Some!, Glen Powell and Richard Linklater are ready to take the mound again for an untitled Lou Gehrig film at Universal. Powell will play the iconic New York Yankee, with Linklater attached to direct and Simon Rich writing.
Lifelong Yankee fan Lorne Michaels will produce alongside Erin David under Broadway Video’s first-look deal with Universal. Powell will produce alongside Dan Cohen in Barnstorm's first-look deal with the studio.
Gehrig, considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time, is one of the 20th century’s most revered sport figures thanks in great part to his durability that earned him the nickname “The Iron Horse.” The seven-time All-Star played in a record 2,130 consecutive games, a mark that was thought to be unreachable until Baltimore’s Cal Ripken topped it in 1998.
The first baseman played his entire 17-year career with the Yankees, winning six World Series titles including on the 1927 Yankees team many believe to be the greatest ever assembled. He won the Triple Crown in 1934, hitting .363, with 49 home runs and 166 RBIs.
Gerhig’s games-played streak and career would come to an abrupt halt in 1939, when he was diagnosed with what eventually would be known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the neuromuscular disease now commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He died in 1941 at age 37.
The Gehrig story is one Hollywood loves but has somehow only told once, in the classic 1942 drama Pride of the Yankees, which starred Gary Cooper as the Hall of Famer. It included Gehrig’s iconic retirement speech at Yankee Stadium in his last public appearance (“For the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break,” Gehrig told the Yankee faithful. “Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”).
It is unknown what will be covered in the new film, but sources say one of Gehrig’s teammates expected to have an important role in the film is Babe Dahlgren, the man tasked with replacing Gehrig at first base. There’s no production start date yet, but Powell plans to take break after working nonstop for the past year-plus. Expect every young actor in town to be chasing the Dahlgren part given the star power attached to the project.
Powell is an avid sports fan (especially when it comes to his Texas Longhorns), so the Gehrig project falls right into his wheelhouse just as he is wrapping production on the second season of the Hulu football series Chad Powers.
Powell and Linklater most recently worked together on the 2024 Netflix comedy Hitman, and when this project found its way to the pair, it felt like the perfect pic on which to reunite.
Linklater is in talks to produce through Detour Filmproduction. Senior EVP Production Development Erik Baiers will oversee the project for Universal.
Powell's relationship with Universal dates to his starring role in Twisters, which in 2024 overperformed and became the biggest opening for a natural disaster film at the domestic box office; it grossed $267.8 million overall in the U.S./Canada.
Barnstorm is also producing The Comeback King, which Universal will distribute in theaters on February 5, 2027. Powell also has the J.J. Abrams pic The Great Beyond bowing fall of 2027.
Rich most recently penned Luca Guadagnino’s feature Artificial. The film, starring Andrew Garfield as OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, recently landed at Neon with plans to bow this year. He also wrote An American Pickle, starring Seth Rogen, and was a staff writer at Pixar. His credits include Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons, and he is the creator of the TV shows Man Seeking Woman and Miracle Workers
Powell is represented by CAA, The Initiative Group and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole. Linklater is repped by CAA and Cinetic Media. Rich is represented by CAA and Eastman and Eastman.
