Teasing the rise and fall of a sporting icon, today’s new US trailer for StudioCanal and Stephen Frears’ Lance Armstrong biopic The Program places Ben Foster at the helm as the shunned Tour de France champion.
Marking Frears’ second cinematic portrait of a famous figure after directing Helen Mirren in The Queen, The Program will shed light on the meteoric rise of Armstrong, who won the gruelling Tour de France seven consecutive times in the early 2000s. A staggering sporting achievement that almost defied description, the former cyclist found his reputation lying in tatters after he was found guilty of doping, effectively stripping him of those coveted titles.
Also starring Lee Pace, Chris O’Dowd, Dustin Hoffman, and Jesse Plemons, The Program may not have lit up the festival circuit in 2015 in the way StudioCanal would have hoped, but the intriguing subject matter alone has us cautiously optimistic that Frears’ latest biopic can find an audience come next month.
Having raced into UK theaters late last year, The Program will make a beeline for North America on March 18 for a limited release. DirecTV, meanwhile, will air the biopic a little earlier on February 18. To get the gist of how the Frears drama fares, check out our own review coming out of last year’s TIFF.
He was one of the biggest sports heroes of our time: Lance Armstrong has revolutionized in the nineties with his team the sport of cycling, he won seven times alone in the Tour de France. With his fight against cancer, he became the charismatic icon of millions. But then the truth of his success is revealed: The sports journalist David Walsh covers a system of lies and cheating on … After “The Queen”, director Stephen Frears focuses again a cult figure of the present and shows how close greatness and megalomania often to each other. A fascinating portrait with US actor Ben Foster as Armstrong worthy of an Oscar occupied.
