By So following the success of Raging Bull, one of Robert DeNiro’s best performances and a fine film from Scorcese, the real Jake LaMotta, along with Chris Anderson and Sharon McGehee, wrote about the rest of his life after the film’s release and showed a bit more of his life before what we see in the film. Frankly, it sounds like a story worth telling. This book, cleverly titled Raging Bull II, is now being adapted into a real-life motion picture. A talkie, even. William Forsythe will be playing the older Jake LaMotta, and casting is underway to find a younger Jake, as well as other roles, in preparation for a June through July shoot.
My knee-jerk reaction is the usual, “BRAAGH LEAVE THE CLASSICS ALONE BRAAGH RAGING BULL DOESN’T NEED A SEQUEL,” but now that I’ve taken a couple minutes to think about this, it’s really not such a bad thing. With a situation like this, where we’ve gotten a biopic of a portion of a living person’s life, I don’t see why there wouldn’t be room for another film. I haven’t read Raging Bull II, so I don’t know how compelling the other events of LaMotta’s life are, and it’s fairly unlikely it’ll be handled by a talent like Martin Scorcese, but there’s really not a lot of reason to write this movie off as absolute crap right away.
[Via Moviehole]