Dallas Sting: Matthew McConaughey soccer movie scrapped just weeks before production

Skydance was just six weeks away from kicking off production on Dallas Sting, a movie starring Matthew McConaughey that revolved around a Dallas women’s soccer team who travelled to China and defeated some of the best women’s teams in the world. However, the production pulled the plug when they “received disturbing allegations surrounding aspects of the true story on which the drama was based.“

It’s not clear what the allegations involved, but they were obviously serious enough for Skydance to scrap the almost fully cast movie. Sources told THR that the producers were very disappointed by the development as “they felt the story of the 1984 team and its young women deserved to be told.” Matthew McConaughey was set to play soccer coach Bill Kinder, who, against all odds, led the women’s team as they defeated Australia, Japan, China, and Italy in the championships. Kaitlyn Dever (Dopesick) was also set to star as Kinder’s daughter. The rest of the cast was rounded out by actual soccer players who went through a substantial audition process. Kari Skogland (The Falcon and the Winter Solider) was slated to direct from a script by Liz Flahive & Carly Mensch (GLOW).

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan was trying to open relations with China, who then invited America to take part in the first world women’s soccer championship. At the time, there was no U.S. women’s soccer team. After a nationwide search, they found a group of young high-school girls in Dallas who called themselves The Sting. Just making the trip to China involved cutting through a lot of red tape and a lot of money, and no one really expected that the scrappy underdogs would be able to stand up to the other international teams, let alone win the championship.

Matthew McConaughey was recently heard reprising his role of Buster Moon in Sing 2.