LOS ANGELES: Oscar winner Mark Rylance will take on the lead role in golf comedy-drama film "The Fantastic Flitcrofts". Craig Roberts, the filmmaker of movies such as "Just Jim" and "Eternal Beauty", will direct the movie, reported Deadline.
Simon Farnaby has adapted the screenplay from the book The Phantom Of The Open, which he co-wrote with UK journalist Scott Murray.
60-year-old Rylance will play Maurice Flitcroft, a dreamer and unrelenting optimist, who managed to gain entry to The British Open Golf Championship qualifying in 1976 and subsequently shot the worst round in Open history, becoming a folk hero in the process.
The project will be produced by Nichola Martin through Baby Cow Films, Tom Miller from Water & Power Productions and Kate Glover. Christine Langan and James Swarbrick are attached as executive producers.
Rylance told Deadline that he is quite "thrilled" to be working in a comedy feature. "I have had some of my best times in the theatre in comedies, Boeing Boeing, and Twelfth Night in the West End and on Broadway. This is the first comic film I have ever been offered. A comedy of character and situation which I love," the Oscar winner said.