New biopic about Jesse Owens in the making

Runners will have no shortage of movies to inspire them in the next few years.

After being recently unveiled that a movie, starring Daniel Radcliffe, about Seb Coe-Steve Ovett rivalry is in the making, it’s now been announced that Disney is planning to put together a Jesse Owens biopic based on Jeremy Schaap’s book Triumph about the American sprinter’s life.

The new film will be produced by Gail Berman, Lloyd Braun and Gil Netter. Netter is known for producing Water for Elephants and Life of Pi. They have hired Antoine Fuqua, known most recently for directing Olympus Has Fallen. He also directed Training Day and Tears of the Sun. David Seidler will write the screenplay.

There are no known actors yet.

Jesse Owens was born in the South but his family migrated north to escape segregation. He went on to win four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which were nearly boycotted when Adolf Hitler considered banning blacks and Jews from competition. Owens shattered Nazi ideas about Aryan supremacy in their own capital before the outbreak of the Second World War.

One of Owens’ gold medals was just auctioned for $1.5 million, the highest ever going price for a piece of Olympic memorabilia. The whereabouts of his other three medals are unknown, and it’s unknown for which event he was awarded the auctioned one.