Lance Armstrong: Hero to Hollywood antihero?

Lance Armstrong. Cancer survivor. Seven time Tour de France winner. Massive doping scheme. Dethroned. Hollywood has taken notice. On the one hand [THR]:

Meanwhile, two once-promising Armstrong dramas quietly have been dropped. Sony held high hopes for a project based on Armstrong’s 2001 best-selling memoir It’s Not About the Bike and tapped Frank Marshall (the Bourne franchise) to produce (Damon was rumored to star). An insider says the studio let go of the property more than a year ago, though Marshall is developing it on his own. A project from Ed Pressman (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps) had Armstrong’s backing until he threw in with Marshall. With a script by Olympic documentarian Bud Greenspan, who died in 2010, it’s considered inactive.

On the other hand:

But several lit agents say the cyclist is now a much more compelling figure to Hollywood. “It’s not about him rising and becoming the greatest athlete,” explains one agent. “He has become a polarizing figure.” To that end, Paradigm is shopping screen rights to cyclist Tyler Hamilton’s tell-all, The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs. Insiders say the book, which was published Sept. 5 and details Armstrong’s systematic doping, was taken to studios by various producers (Imagine, for example, pitched it to Universal).

Is the antihero version of Lance Armstrong more compelling than the hero?

From a writing perspective, we’ve talked about how you can switch Protagonists: Look at a story through the eyes of a Nemesis as the narrative’s ‘hero’ [as in the musical “Wicked,” the Wizard of Oz story told through the perspective of the Wicked Witch].

Here a slightly different story development trick to the package: Turn your hero into an antihero. Certainly seems to have to worked in TV [e.g., Breaking Bad, Dexter, The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire]. The ‘dark’ side of the human experience can make for compelling stories.

For more of the Hollywood Reporter article, go here.

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