Don’t worry, it’s not a feature length chess match but it’s not far off. Tobey Maguire is set to produce and star in a film about American chess player Bobby Fischer titled, “Pawn Sacrifice.”
The film will center on Fischer’s unlikely 1972 victory over Russian chess champ Boris Spassky which saw him take Spassky’s world champion title in a match billed as a ‘Cold War battle.’
Fischer’s life has been full of peaks and troughs though; a grandmaster at the age of 15, his rise in the chess world was marred by his fall into seclusion, unnecessary forfeiting of the title and fall out with the U.S. government. He briefly reappeared in 1992 to beat Spassky in a rematch.
“Eastern Promise” scribe Steven Knight’s work on the Fischer story was so impressed the studio that Columbia Pictures evidently hired the scribe for their adaptation of Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol.” While that’s not so much a complement, Knight was brought onto the just-announced RFK biopic, starring Matt Damon, so he’s doing something right.
A chess drama obviously sounds as exciting as watching paint dry but the mysterious genius that is Fischer does at least like a intriguing prospect for Maguire. But, would anyone go watch?