You don’t have to search so hard for Bobby Fischer these days – just make a right at the maggots*. The formerly alive chess champ is getting a movie made about his early days, when he acheived fame by going head to head with Russkie chess tsar Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland. The Cold War was so hot at the time that the nation was transfixed by an American versus Commie bout, and the matches were televised like real sports games. Fischer later went into isolation – thus the title of the famous chess movie Searching for Bobby Fischer – and then reappeared as something of a lunatic and an anti-Semite. Doh. I somehow doubt this stuff will make it into the film, which is being directed by Last King of Scotland‘s Kevin Macdonald after he finishes his cursed adaptation of State of Play. Or maybe it could be the dark ending, sort of like ‘Way of the future’ closed out The Aviator. We could fade out on Bobby Fischer cradling the Queen, mumbling ‘Goddamned Jews! Goddamned Jews!’
The script is written by Shawn Slovo, based on the book Bobby Fischer Goes to War by David Edmonds and John Eidinow. Universal and Working Title will produce. Macdonald may actually direct another film before getting on this one, a Roman drama called Eagle of the Ninth.
*too soon? If I wait any longer he’ll be well past the maggot stage.