Famously, Bill Murray is difficult to pin down to a project. The legendary comic star is famous for not having an agent or manager. Instead, the only way to offer him something (unless, like Sofia Coppola or Wes Anderson, you already have a personal relationship with him) is to get hold of a voicemail number, leave a message, and hope that he calls you back. Plenty of directors have talked of turning up for the first day of production not knowing if Murray was on board.
But it seems to us that a pretty good way to ensure that Murray becomes interested in your movie is by making it about the Chicago Cubs. Murray is a big fan of baseball (or as we call it here in the UK, ‘shit cricket’), and more specifically of the Cubs, the famous underdog team who went more than a century without winning the World Series until their legendary victory at the end of 2016.
Murray was there on that night, weeping with joy, and now he looks to be circling a new movie, “Teammate,” about the Cubs’ winning season. Deadline report that Australian filmmaker Shane Abbess, a big fan of the game, will direct the project, based on catcher David Ross’s book “Teammate: My Journey In Baseball And A World Series For The Ages,” and Murray is in discussions to play the team’s manager Joe Maddon.
Ted Field, the Chicago-born producer of movies including “The Last Samurai,” “Spring Breakers” and “Riddick” is backing the project, from a script by Ram Getz and John Corcoran. Abbess is known for low-budget sci-fi films like “Gabriel,” so this would be a change of pace for him, but he seems to be passionate about the subject, and if he can solidly land Murray (and given that the target audience for this movie appears to be ‘Bill Murray’ he may well do), we’re sure a green light will be forthcoming. More on the project as it comes in.