We have plenty of boxing movies, thank you very much. Recent years have seen “Creed” (the best of the bunch), “Southpaw,” “Bleed For This,” “Hands Of Stone,” “Glass Chin,” “Grudge Match” and, this year alone, “Chuck,” “Jawbone” and “Journeyman.” But the upcoming “Gypsy Boy,” which has just been announced, promises to have a few things that make it stand out from the crowd.
For one, it’s about bare-knuckle boxing in the Romany community in the U.K., which hasn’t really stood at the center of a movie since “Snatch.” For another, it’ll follow a young gay man trying to come to terms with his family’s tradition in the ring. And for another, uh, Benedict Cumberbatch is going to star as the fearsome gypsy brawler patriarch, according to Screen Daily.
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It’s at least a break from playing socially difficult often-millionaire geniuses for the star, per “Sherlock,” “The Imitation Game,” “Doctor Strange” and the upcoming “The Current War,” though we can’t say he’s an obvious fit to play Frank Walsh, the father of the film’s lead character Mikey (it’s a true story, based on Mikey Walsh’s books “Gypsy Boy” and “Gypsy Boy: On The Run”). But interesting to see him pushing himself with a film like this, which will reteam Morgan Matthews and James Graham, the director and writer of rather sweet, underrated maths drama “X+Y” (released as “A Brilliant Young Mind” in the U.S)
Cumberbatch has a busy schedule at the moment, juggling the “Avengers” movies with miniseries “Patrick Melrose,” TV movie “The Child In Time,” Walter Salles’ “The Man In The Rockefeller Suit,” Luca Guadagnino’s “Rio” with Jake Gyllenhaal, and voice gigs in “The Jungle Book” and “How The Grinch Stole Christmas,” but this one’s looking to shoot next summer, so expect it to be a potential awards-season player in 2019 if everything holds.