Remaining in the realm of real-life drama, Craig Gillespie has agreed terms to helm I, Tonya, an upcoming sports biopic that places Suicide Squad star Margot Robbie in the role of disgraced figure skater, Tonya Harding.
Gillespie, who dazzled audiences with gripping spectacle earlier this year through The Finest Hours, will work from a script penned by Steven Rogers, chronicling Harding’s meteoric rise to becoming one of the hottest stars on the ice. At her peak, Harding achieved what many believed to be impossible: complete the triple axel in major competitions in the early ’90s. She was the first American woman to do so, too, and her dramatic rise to prominence is matched only by her staggering fall from grace.
You see, three years after taking the sport by storm, Tonya Harding was found guilty of a malicious ploy to sabotage the career of arch-rival Nancy Kerrigan. Ordering a group of thugs to viciously attack Kerrigan along with her husband Jeff Gillooly – and essentially send her dream of an Olympic medal up in smokes – Harding’s jealously reared its ugly face in 1994. But karma had the final say, given Kerrigan went on to outperform her scheming rival at the main event having only sustained a bruised knee during said attack.
It’s a scandal that’s almost stranger than fiction, and ought to make for compelling drama on the big screen. Margot Robbie is attached to star and produce the Tonya Harding biopic, with support from Bryan Unkeless on behalf of Clubhouse Pictures.
I, Tonya is one movie on a crowded slate for Margot Robbie, who has lined up the one-two blockbuster punch of The Legend of Tarzan and David Ayer’s Suicide Squad in the coming months.
