Deadline is reporting that Tobey Maguire will star in the upcoming Bobby Fischer biopic Pawn Sacrifice. The film will be directed by the awesome David Fincher based on a script by Steven Knight, who wrote Eastern Promises and will also be writing the script for the upcoming Robert Kennedy biopic starring Matt Damon. The film is set to cover Fischer's life story up until the 1972 World Chess Championships where he defeated Russian Boris Spassky in what was essentially a real life Rocky IV Cold War battle.
I can understand the decision to only go up until that moment of his life, but I'm not the biggest fan of the decision. For those that are unfamiliar, calling Bobby Fischer quirky would be the understatement of the millenium. Along with his ascension in the chess ranks came an insatiable ego, paranoia, and all the other fun stuff that happens with the cliched "troubled genius". In a lot of ways you could say everything went downhill after the 1972 Championships eventually leading to a time where Fischer is living oversees as an anti-semitic and anti-American fugitive from the United States, which in turn led to him famously celebrating the 9/11 attacks as "what goes around comes around".
Up until his death in 2008 Fischer continued to live his life in seclusion while unrelenting on his hatred towards the United States. It always seemed to me that Fischer clearly had some serious mental issues that, had he been born 40 years later, would have been classified and quite possibly quelled well before his life of seclusion. At the same time all the analysis and subsequent attempts at behavior modification could quite possibly have changed the entire course of his historic chess career.
I guess that career, which could be argued was either the cause or escape from his possible insanity, will be the only focus here, as it was in his life. We'll keep you updated.
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