Last reported on back in May, it seems like Jon Hamm’s upcoming starring vehicle MILLION DOLLAR ARM is on the verge of securing a director in the form of Craig Gillespie. I presume this means that production is moving closer to commencing, though there is technically no start date as of yet for the movie.
Gillespie is an interesting man to watch (in both sense of the phrase), having moved in recent years from crass comedy (MR. WOODCOCK) to emotional drama replete with a quietly fantastic visual sense(LARS AND THE REAL GIRL) to horror reimagining (FRIGHT NIGHT). Should negotiations go through, and I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t, Gillespie will be helming a script from Tom McCarthy (WIN WIN) that tells the true story about “how sports agent J.B. Bernstein discovered professional pitchers Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel through a reality show he staged in India with cricket players.”
And here’s some further elaboration on the true story MILLION DOLLAR ARM means to tell: Bernstein noticed how similar the game’s throwing motion was to that of baseball pitchers and created the reality show “Million Dollar Arm” to audition 40,000 cricket players. Not only did he have to teach Singh and Patel the rules of baseball, but he also had to teach them about American culture and speaking English. Bernstein’s work paid off when the duo became the first Indian players to sign with pro baseball teams when they got contracts with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Hamm’s “Mad Men” costar Christina Hendricks doing that whole “how in the world are you actually this gorgeous” thing she tends to do.