Actors DiCaprio, Abhay Deol firms tie-up for boxer’s biopic

Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions has teamed up with ‘Zindagi Na Milega Dobara’ star Abhay Deol’s Canada-based content creation company, Blisspoint Entertainment, and Singapore’s Golden Ratio Films to make ‘Pep’, a biopic of the legendary mid-20th century featherweight boxer Guglielmo Papaleo, better known as Willie Pep.

The project was developed by Blisspoint, a company created two years ago by Deol and Mumbai-based producer Ratan Ginwalla. The third partner in the film set in 1965, Golden Ratio Films, had previously produced the French English-language movie, ‘The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir’ (2018), starring Dhanush, the Tamil star.

‘Pep’, according to Variety.com, had an extraordinarily long career spanning 26 years and nearly 2,000 rounds of boxing as a professional. The film charts one of Pep’s comebacks, as he finds himself riddled with debt while supporting a wife half his age and a drug addict son in a single-family home.

‘Band of Brothers’ actor James Madio stars in the title role, alongside Keir Gilchrist, who will play the role of Pep’s son, Billy Jr, and Ron Livingston, who essays the character Bob Kaplan, Pep’s business manager. No female leads have yet been confirmed.

Image courtesy of (courtesy: Twitter@MonteroOnBoxing)

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