{"id":758641,"date":"2026-07-22T17:24:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T17:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/758641\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T17:24:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T17:24:16","slug":"glen-powell-to-play-lou-gehrig-in-new-richard-linklater-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/758641\/","title":{"rendered":"Glen Powell To Play Lou Gehrig In New Richard Linklater Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: After hitting a home run with their 2016 college baseball pic Everybody Wants Some!, Glen Powell<\/a> and Richard Linklater<\/a> are ready to take the mound again for an untitled Lou Gehrig<\/a> film at Universal<\/a>. Powell will play the iconic New York Yankee, with Linklater attached to direct and Simon Rich writing.<\/p>\n

\n\tLifelong Yankee fan Lorne Michaels will produce alongside Erin David under Broadway Video\u2019s first-look deal with Universal. Powell will produce alongside Dan Cohen in Barnstorm\u2019s first-look deal with the studio. Linklater is in talks to produce through Detour Filmproduction. <\/p>\n

\n\tGehrig, considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time, is one of the 20th century\u2019s most revered sport figures thanks in great part to his durability that earned him the nickname \u201cThe Iron Horse.\u201d The seven-time All-Star played in a record 2,130 consecutive games, a mark that was thought to be unreachable until Baltimore\u2019s Cal Ripken topped it in 1998.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first baseman played his entire 17-year career with the Yankees, winning six World Series titles including on the 1927 Yankees team many believe to be the greatest ever assembled. He won the Triple Crown in 1934, hitting .363, with 49 home runs and 166 RBIs.<\/p>\n

\n\tGerhig\u2019s games-played streak and career would come to an abrupt halt in 1939, when he was diagnosed with what eventually would be known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the neuromuscular disease now commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig\u2019s disease. He died in 1941 at age 37.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Gehrig story is one Hollywood loves but has somehow only told once, in the classic 1942 drama Pride of the Yankees, which starred Gary Cooper as the Hall of Famer. It included Gehrig\u2019s iconic retirement speech at Yankee Stadium in his last public appearance (\u201cFor the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break,\u201d Gehrig told the Yankee faithful. \u201cYet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.\u201d).<\/p>\n

\n\tIt is unknown what will be covered in the new film, but sources say one of Gehrig\u2019s teammates expected to have an important role in the film is Babe Dahlgren, the man tasked with replacing Gehrig at first base. There\u2019s no production start date yet, but Powell plans to take break after working nonstop for the past year-plus. Expect every young actor in town to be chasing the Dahlgren part given the star power attached to the project.<\/p>\n

\n\tPowell is an avid sports fan (especially when it comes to his Texas Longhorns), so the Gehrig project falls right into his wheelhouse just as he is wrapping production on the second season of the Hulu football series Chad Powers.<\/p>\n

\n\tPowell and Linklater most recently worked together on the 2024 Netflix comedy Hitman, and when this project found its way to the pair, it felt like the perfect pic on which to reunite.<\/p>\n

\n\tSenior EVP Production Development Erik Baiers will oversee the project for Universal.<\/p>\n

\n\tPowell\u2019s relationship with Universal dates to his starring role in\u00a0Twisters, which in 2024 overperformed and became the biggest opening for a natural disaster film at the domestic box office; it grossed $267.8 million overall in the U.S.\/Canada.<\/p>\n

\n\tBarnstorm is also producing\u00a0The Comeback King, which Universal will distribute in theaters on February 5, 2027. Powell also has the J.J. Abrams pic The Great Beyond bowing fall of 2027.<\/p>\n

\n\tRich most recently penned Luca Guadagnino\u2019s feature Artificial. The film, starring Andrew Garfield as OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, recently landed at Neon<\/a> with plans to bow this year. He also wrote\u00a0An American Pickle, starring Seth Rogen, and was a staff writer at Pixar. His credits include\u00a0Saturday Night Live\u00a0and\u00a0The Simpsons, and he is the creator of the TV shows\u00a0Man Seeking Woman\u00a0and\u00a0Miracle Workers<\/p>\n

\n\tPowell is represented by CAA, The Initiative Group and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole. Linklater is repped by CAA and Cinetic Media. Rich is represented by CAA and Eastman and Eastman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: After hitting a home run with their 2016 college baseball pic Everybody Wants Some!, Glen Powell and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":758642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,93977,6951,93978,93979],"class_list":["post-758641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baseball","tag-baseball","tag-glen-powell","tag-lou-gehrig","tag-richard-linklater","tag-universal"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116964796917267837","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/758642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}