The planned baseball movie that Adam Sandler was to headline, from director Josh Sadfie, sounds a little less certain.
It’s been a few months since we heard anything regarding this particular project, which seems to be taking an age to get in front of cameras. The film in question is Josh Safdie’s untitled baseball film which will star Adam Sandler, marking the pair’s next collaboration following the excellent 2020 film, Uncut Gems.
That film was a riveting drama that was bought to us courtesy of Netflix and was directed by Benny and Josh Safdie. The Safdies are no longer directing together, with Benny having moved on to helm A24’s The Smashing Machine starring Dwayne Johnson.
The film is said to focus around baseball and as such, needs to shoot during the sport’s season. Last year’s strikes meant that couldn’t happen and as such, the project seems to have stalled.
Given that the cast for this one is said to include the likes of Sandler, Ben Affleck, Steve Harvey, Megan Thee Stallion and Gael Garcia Bernal, there’s always the worry that schedules won’t line up, especially as the film needs to be shot during the baseball window.
Still, Adam Sandler hopes it will still happen. While that’s the least confident wording we’ve heard yet regarding the project, his comments to IndieWire indicate just how enamoured he is with the project. “It’s something that we talked about today,” Sandler said. “It’s hopefully going to come back. It’s crazy, it’s a cool script, very long. Josh doesn’t stop working hard.”
All we know about the project so far is this brief synopsis which was revealed some time ago: ‘Set in the world of high-end sports card collecting in the 1990s, a retired Baseball pitcher (Affleck) attempts a comeback as a sports memorabilia agent (Sandler) attempts to capitalise on his success.’
Speaking of Josh, the filmmaker is set to shoot a different sporting movie first, that being Marty Supreme with Timothee Chalamet this autumn. That’s a ping pong movie – also for A24 – and hopefully following that project, the stars wil finally align for his next collaboration with Sandler. We’ll let you know more as we hear it.
