Netflix Announces Cast For ‘The Beautiful Game’ Film Led By Bill Nighy & Micheal Ward
Netflix has announced the cast for their upcoming football film ‘The Beautiful Game’, which will be led by BAFTA and Golden Globe Award-winning actor Bill Nighy (‘Love Actually’, ‘Shaun of the Dead’) and BAFTA Rising Star award-winning actor Micheal Ward (‘Top Boy’, ‘Small Axe- Lovers Rock’).
‘The Beautiful Game’ follows a team of English homeless footballers, led by their coach Mal (Nighy), who travel from London to Rome to compete in a global annual football tournament – The Homeless World Cup. At the last minute, they decide to bring with them a talented striker Vinny (Ward), but he must confront his own issues and once-promising past, in order to help the team win the cup and move on with his own life. In Rome just as in life, everything’s to play for.
Joining Bill Nighy and Micheal Ward are Valeria Golino (‘Morning Show’, ‘Rain Man’), Callum Scott Howells (‘It’s a Sin’), Kit Young (‘Shadow & Bone’), Sheyi Cole (‘Small Axe’ – Alex Wheatle), Robin Nazari (‘Snabba Cash’), Tom Vaughan-Lawlor (‘Avengers Infinity War’, ‘The Infiltrator’), Susan Wokoma (‘Chewing Gum’, ‘Enola Holmes’), Layo-Christina Akinlude (‘The End of the F**king World’) and Cristina Rodlo (‘No One Gets Out Alive’).
“The Beautiful Game is a film about succeeding against the odds,” comments Graham Broadbent of Blueprint Pictures. “Our film shows the joy, drama and excitement of this real-life tournament and the enormous potential of people left behind by society.”
The film is directed by Thea Sharrock (‘Me Before You’, ‘The Hollow Crown’), written by Frank Cottrell-Boyce (‘The Railway Man’, ’24 Hour Party People’) and produced for Netflix by Blueprint Pictures’ Graham Broadbent & Pete Czernin and Anita Overland. Blueprint Pictures’ Ben Knight and Diarmuid McKeown serve as exec producers. ‘The Beautiful Game’ was developed in conjunction with Film4, for whom Ollie Madden and Daniel Battsek serve as exec producers.
For those of you wondering about the real-life event on which the film is based, The Homeless World Cup Foundation is a unique, pioneering charity that uses football to inspire people who are homeless to change their own lives. Their vision is for a world without homelessness. There mission is to use football to support and inspire people who are homeless to change their own lives, and to change perceptions and attitudes towards people who are experiencing homelessness. You can find out more about The Homeless World Cup Foundation here.
“We are incredibly excited to be the focus of the upcoming film The Beautiful Game. The Homeless World Cup Foundation uses our annual tournament and the power of football as a method of tackling homelessness throughout the world. We have impacted the lives of over 1.2 million homeless people since 2003,” adds Mel Young, President and Founder of the Homeless World Cup Foundation. “The Homeless World Cup is our contribution to tackling the homeless problem across the globe but there is so much more to do. We have proved just how powerful football can be when it is applied to a social problem and we will keep striving to do more. We hope that the work we do being told in The Beautiful Game inspires more people to join in and support future Homeless World Cups and together we can all aim to end homelessness forever.”
‘The Beautiful Game’ will premiere on Netflix UK and worldwide (date/time TBC).
