A couple of years ago a movie about chess legend Bobby Fischer called Pawn Sacrifice was set up at Sony Pictures with David Fincher set to direct and Tobey Maguire producing. After two years of not hearing much of anything on this project, it's back in the news.
Maguire is now officially set to star in the film and will be playing Fischer. He's is a great actor, and I think he'll end up doing an amazing job playing the chess master.
Fincher obviously didn't wait around for the movie to happen so the studio is now in talks with Blood Diamond director Ed Zwick to develop it. Zwick has also directed films such as The Last Samurai and Defiance, and I think he'd be a great choice for the film project. I was just looking forward to seeing what Fincher would do with it.
I'm fascinated by the life of Bobby Fischer; it was quite interesting and colorful. He was a chess prodigy, and one of the greatest chess players of all time. There are some great books and documentaries out there that tell his tale.
What do you think of Zwick directing Maguire in this biopic?
Here's a brief rundown of his life, thanks to wiki:
A chess prodigy, at age 13 Fischer won a "brilliancy" that became known as The Game of the Century. Starting at age 14, he played in eight United States Championships, winning each by at least a point. At age 15½, he became both the youngest grandmaster and the youngest candidate for the World Championship up to that time. He won the 1963–64 U.S. Championship 11–0, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament. In the early 1970s he became one of the most dominant players in modern history—winning the 1970 Interzonal by a record 3½-point margin and winning 20 consecutive games, including two unprecedented 6–0 sweeps in the Candidates Matches. According to research by Jeff Sonas, in 1971 Fischer had separated himself from the rest of the world by a larger margin of playing skill than any player since the 1870s. He became the first official World Chess Federation (FIDE) number-one rated chess player in July 1971, and his 54 total months at number one is the third longest of all time.
In 1972, he captured the World Championship from Boris Spassky of the USSR in a match widely publicized as a Cold War confrontation. The match, held in Reykjavík, Iceland, attracted more worldwide interest than any chess match before or since. In 1975, Fischer declined to defend his title when he could not reach agreement with FIDE over the conditions for the match. He became more reclusive and did not play competitive chess again until 1992, when he won an unofficial rematch against Spassky. The competition was held in Yugoslavia, which was then under a United Nations embargo. This led to a conflict with the U.S. government, which was also seeking income tax from Fischer on his match winnings. Fischer never returned to his native country. After ending his competitive career, he proposed a newvariant of chess and a modified chess timing system. His idea of adding a time increment after each move is now standard, and his variant Chess960 is gaining in popularity.
In his later years, Fischer lived in Hungary, Germany, the Philippines, Japan, and Iceland. During this time he made increasingly anti-American and anti-Israel statements. After his U.S. passport was revoked over the Yugoslavia sanctions issue, he was detained by Japanese authorities for nine months in 2004 and 2005 under threat of deportation. In February 2005, Iceland granted him right of residence as a "stateless" alien and issued him a passport. When Japan refused to release him on that basis, Iceland's parliament voted in March 2005 to give him full citizenship. The Japanese authorities then released Fischer to Iceland, where he lived until his death in 2008.
