Paramount, J.J. Abrams’ Lance Armstrong biopic gets screenwriter

The Lance Armstrong biopic in the works at Paramount is still moving forward, despite two competing projects on the same disgraced cyclist. J.J. Abrams and Bryan Burk's Bad Robot is producing and now it finally has a screenwriter.

On Monday, Deadline reported that D.V. DeVincentis has been hired to adapt New York Times writer Juliet Macur’s Cycle Of Lies: The Fall Of Lance Armstrong, which will be the basis for the film. Macur covered Armstrong during the decade that he won a record seven Tour De France titles, which have all been stripped away since he finally admitted to using performance enhancing drugs.

DeVincentis doesn’t have many writing credits, but they include Stephen Frears’ High Fidelity and Lay the Favorite. He is currently working on Disney’s Night Stalker and wrote Fox Searchlight’s Bengali Detective.

Although Paramount was the first studio to announce that it is making an Armstrong biopic, it is actually running behind the two other projects in the works. StudioCanal and Working Title are working on one project that Frears is attached to direct and will star Ben Foster as Armstrong. Chris O’Dowd will play journalist David Walsh, who wrote the book that the film is based on (Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit Of Lance Armstrong).

Warner Bros. tapped Game Change director Jay Roach to direct its film, which will focus on whistleblower and fellow cyclist Tyler Hamilton and his relationship with Armstrong. In August, Bradley Cooper entered that project, to produce. He is also in talks to play either Hamilton or Armstrong.

This year, documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney produced The Armstrong Lie, which is image: Wikimedia Commons

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