Gerard Butler Signs On For ‘Dynamo’

Deadline article:

http://www.deadline.com/2012/10/gerard-butler-signs-on-for-dynamo/

Gerard Butler Signs On For ‘Dynamo’
By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Tuesday October 30, 2012 @ 5:55pm


Gerard Butler has been set to star in Dynamo, a true story based on the novel Dynamo: Defending The Honour Of Kiev by Andy Dougan. Eli Richbourg adapted the screenplay. Riviera Pictures, Beau Flynn of FlynnPictureCo., and Jeremy Garelick will produce. Pathé co-developed and will co-produce and distribute the film worldwide. Talks with possible directors are underway.

Dynamo is based on the landmark soccer game that took place between an occupied Ukrainian soccer team and their Nazi captors during World War II. Butler will star as Nikolai Trusevich, the all-star goalie who served as a cornerstone and leader for his team, and ultimately inspired the entire battered city of Kiev, Ukraine. To stem a rising tide of resistance and establish Aryan superiority, the Nazi’s set up a match pitting the starving Ukrainians against a ‘super team’ of German players that to this day is still known as “The Death Match”. Dynamo will shoot in Europe in 2013.

My immediate reaction was --Oh my, the accent on this one! Butler playing a Russian?

He could be like Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October. Wasn't he supposed to be Russian but basically sounded Scottish?

I guess Gerry will be playing the Russian Frank Borghi....goalie, leader for his team, landmark soccer game....

A little more info from Cinema Blend:

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Gerard-Butler-Joins-True-Story-Soccer-Drama-Dynamo-33847.html


Gerard Butler Joins True Story Soccer Drama Dynamo

Gerard Butler seems to be on a bit of a "true story" kick recently. Last year he stared as Sam Childres in Marc Forster's Machine Gun Preacher, you can currently see him in the Curtis Hanson-directed surfing biopic Chasing Mavericks, and now the Scottish star is ready to present the story of a Ukrainian soccer team rising up during World War II.

Deadline says that Butler has been officially signed to play a lead role in Dynamo, an adaptation of the book Dynamo: Defending The Honour Of Kiev by Andy Dougan. The story is about a legendary game played between the occupied Ukranian soccer and their Nazi captors. The game was set up to try and put down anti-Nazi resistance in Kiev and the Germans brought in a "super team" to show their strength. The game, dubbed "The Death Match" ended up having the opposite effect as it actually inspired the people of the city to fight. Butler will be playing Nikolai Trusevich, the Ukranian team all-star goalie and team captain. Eli Richbourg, who has been a producer on Joel Schumacher projects like The Phantom of the Opera, The Number 23, Phone Booth and Bad Company, wrote the script.

Butler has an incredibly busy upcoming schedule, so it's hard to say when Dynamo will actually get going. He will next star in the soccer comedy Playing For Keeps (out this December) and has the Peter Farrelly-produced omnibus comedy Movie 43 coming out in January. He recently wrapped production on Olympus Has Fallen and How To Train Your Dragon 2 is currently in the works.

And more from ComingSoon.net:

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=96536&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Gerard Butler to Headline Dynamo


Gerard Butler has signed on to headline Dynamo, an adaptation of Andy Dougan's nonfiction novel, "Dynamo: Defending the Honour of Kiev." Published in 2002, the book is officially described as follows:

In 1942 at the centre point of World War II an extraordinary event took place not on the battlefield but in a municipal stadium in Kiev. This is the true story of courage, team loyalty and fortitude in the face of the most brutal oppression the world had ever seen. When Hitler initiated Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, he caught the Soviet Union completely by surprise. At breathtaking speed his armies swept east, slaughtering the ill-prepared Soviet forces. His greatest military gains of the entire war were made in a few short months, and the largest single country that he conquered was the Ukraine, roughly the size of France. Ukraine's capital, Kiev, was circled, assaulted and overrun, and among the city's defenders who were captured and incarcerated were many of the members of the sparkling 1939 Dynamo Kiev football team, arguably the best in Europe before the war. Captured Kiev was a starving city whose population were deported in vast numbers as slave labour. However one man determined to save not just the surviving players from the Dynamo side but other athletes. He offered them work, shelter and, most valuable, bread, as workers in his bakery. Inspired by the charismatic goalkeeper Trusevich, the Dynamo side was re-formed as Start FC and a series of fixtures was arranged, all of which the team win handsomely, to such an extent that they inspired Kievan spirits. The final fixture against the Luftwaffe was agreed by the German authorities: a well-fed team from the Fatherland would vanquish the upstart Ukrainians, especially if the game was refereed by an SS officer. The match is an allegory of resistance; its consequences are brutal. Andy Dougan has discovered the truth behind a legendary encounter, sorting fact from fiction and restoring to the centre of World War II a moment of extraordinary poignancy and complex bravery, of which the cliche is demonstrably true: football is not a matter of life or death; it's much more important than that.

Butler can now be seen in theaters in Chasing Mavericks and will next star in the White House siege thriller Olympus Has Fallen, set for release on April 5, 2013.

Dynamo has plans for a European shoot in 2013 with an adapted screenplay by Eli Richbourg. Riviera Pictures, Beau Flynn and Jeremy Garelick are attached to produce.

This is an interesting article from April:

http://espn.go.com/sports/soccer/story/_/id/7795833/ukraine-blocks-death-match-film-fear-ethnic-violence-european-championships

Ukraine blocks 'Death Match' movie
Updated: April 10, 2012, 5:15 PM ET


KIEV, Ukraine -- It's a game that every Ukrainian knows about: The "Death Match" of 1942, when top Kiev soccer players trounced a team of Nazi occupiers and reportedly paid for it with their lives.

But Ukrainian authorities on Tuesday froze the release of a movie depicting that Soviet defiance of Nazi Germany because of concerns it could ignite explosive emotions just weeks before Ukraine co-hosts the 2012 European Championship.

Officials fear that "The Match," which extolls the heroism of Ukrainian soccer players but portrays many Kiev residents as Nazi collaborators, would teach Ukrainian audiences the wrong image of their country and history.

Some experts also fear that it may stoke hostility toward German players and fans as Ukraine hosts several games played by Germany's national team.

The movie tells the story of the Aug. 9, 1942, match, which pitted a Wehrmacht team against players from Kiev's top club Dynamo and other athletes. The Ukrainian team won 5-3 despite reported warnings from the SS that the Ukrainians must lose to their occupiers. Most team members were soon arrested.

"Some things are worth dying for," the actor playing team captain Nikolai Ranevich says in the film, his eyes filling with tears, as he convinces his team to beat the Nazis in a show of resistance and patriotism.

A Soviet journalist dubbed the game the "Death Match" and Soviet authorities long cultivated the legend that the entire team was executed by the Nazis soon afterward. A monument to those players now stands outside the Dynamo stadium.

Historians say that while defeating the Nazi team was undoubtedly courageous, there is no evidence to suggest all of the players were executed in revenge.

Nine of the players were arrested about a week after the match. One soon died in custody and three others were shot in a Kiev concentration camp some six months later, according to Volodymyr Prystaiko, a former Soviet security officer who wrote a book on the match.

German investigators concluded in 2005 there was no evidence linking the death of the three players to the match.

The film's distributor wanted "The Match" to premiere in Ukraine on May 3 and the state cinema agency was to announce its decision on whether to approve the movie last week. But agency spokeswoman Larisa Titarenko said Tuesday the regulator will take another 25 working days to analyze the movie.

Yaroslav Pidhora-Gvyazdovskiy, a member of the expert commission reviewing "The Match," says he recommended banning the movie because it promotes ethnic strife. Most of the characters who collaborate with the Nazis speak Ukrainian while the admirable characters in it speak Russian and fearlessly oppose the invaders, he said.

Independent movie critic Volodymyr Voitenko said the movie should be banned.

"It's ideological propaganda, which is part of Russia's neo-imperialist policy," Voitenko said. "It's a political question and the state must decide whether to allow being spat in the face or not."

Movie producer Dmitry Kulikov accused Ukrainian movie officials of bowing to pressure from "radical nationalist groups."

"There is nothing anti-Ukrainian about this movie," Kulikov said by telephone from Moscow. "We made a movie about the heroic deed of Ukrainians and Kiev residents during the war."