Playing For Pizza

i found out a while ago that "playing for pizza", a book by john grisham, will be a movie soon.

www.cinematical.com/2008/05/22/phoenix-pictures-is-playing-for-pizza-with-john-grisham/

"When you think John Grisham, you usually think of legal thrillers, right? Well, that and the term 'airplane reading', but you probably don't think pastoral sports stories (I know I don't). The Hollywood Reporter announced that Phoenix Pictures has purchased the rights to Grisham's 2007 novel, Playing for Pizza, and the company is already on the hunt for a writer and director for the sports dramedy.

Pizza centers on a third string quarterback for the Cleveland Browns named Rick Docker. After blowing his team's championship shot, Rick is dropped from the team and blacklisted from the NFL. Luckily for him, his enterprising agent finds him a spot in the Italian football league playing for the Parma Panthers. From then on the story is probably a compendium of 'fish out of water jokes', and general cultural misunderstanding -- I'm thinking something along the lines of Under the Tuscan Sun, but with a lot more tackling.
I can't help but remembering back to the 90's when it seemed like you couldn't turn around without seeing another one of Grisham's legal dramas go into production. But, as audiences (and the quality of the movies) sagged, it seemed like his moment in the sun had passed. Now that George Clooney's Smokehouse has picked up the screen rights to Grisham's non-fiction novel, The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town with David Gordon Green set to direct, there may just be a second chance for Grisham on the big screen after all -- although it's going to be awfully tough to live down the reputation of being the man responsible for Christmas with The Kranks."

www.collider.com/entertainment/news/article.asp/aid/7950/tcid/1

"Phoenix Pictures has bought the film rights to John Grisham's "Playing for Pizza," according to The Hollywood Reporter. The 2007 novel is one of the very few non-legal tomes published by the author of "A Time to Kill" and "The Client."

"Pizza" centers on a former NFL quarterback whose agent farms him out to a semi-pro team in Parma, Italy. A downward career move actually becomes a blessing when the quarterback falls in love with his adopted homeland.

While Grisham's 1990's courtroom adaptations have been huge at the box-office, his only non litigious novel to be made into a major motion picture, 2004's "Christmas with the Kranks," has not gone down as well with audiences. Maybe it wasn't Grisham's fault. I think Tim Allen had just made one too many Christmas flicks.

Yet the Grisham name still sells scripts, no matter what the subject matter. Case in point: the author's sole work of non-fiction, "The Innocent Man," which was snapped up for the big screen by George Clooney.

No screenwriter has yet been assigned to "Playing for Pizza" by Phoenix Pictures – the same company that brought us "Zodiac" and Martin Scorsese's forthcoming "Shutter Island" with Leonardo DiCaprio."