Paige’s Biopic ‘Fighting With My Family’ To Star Vince Vaughn As WWE Legend
The upcoming film based on the life of WWE Superstar Paige, Fighting with My Family, already has two well-known actors playing her parents. Now, it looks like producer and WWE legend Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has nabbed another big name to join the cast, as comedian Vince Vaughn is set to be playing a well-known “wrestling star” from the 1980s.
Although Paige remains on the shelf due to injuries suffered last year, the 24-year-old British wrestler has made good use of her downtime. Aside from making appearances on Total Divas and supporting her boyfriend, former WWE Superstar Alberto Del Rio, the “Anti-Diva” will also be seeing her family’s life story brought to life on the big screen, thanks to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s company Seven Bucks Productions and WWE Studios.
The Inquisitr reported recently that Fighting with My Family would be directed by Stephen Merchant, with young U.K. actors Florence Pugh and Jack Lowden playing the roles of Paige and her older brother Zak Zodiac, or Saraya-Jade and Zak Bevis as they’re known in real life.
Last week, The Rock announced the addition of two established English stars to play the roles of Paige’s parents in Fighting with My Family. According to Bleeding Cool News, Lena Headey and Nick Frost were added to the cast to play the roles of Julia “Sweet Saraya” Hamer-Bevis and Patrick “Ricky Knight” Bevis, two iconic names in the world of English wrestling. Headey is best known for playing Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones, while Frost has starred in a number of films alongside Simon Pegg, including Edgar Wright’s “Cornetto Trilogy” (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End) and the 2011 alien comedy Paul.
Cast is coming together very nicely. Welcome Vince Vaughn to our #FightingWithMyFamily. @SevenBucksProd https://t.co/lKpl4s9fsd
— Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) February 14, 2017
The addition of Headey and Frost to the cast of Fighting with My Family did add quite a bit of star power, but The Rock’s latest social media announcement confirms yet another big name — the first American (aside from The Rock, who cameos as himself) of note to join the mostly-British cast.
Vince Vaughn, who had previously starred in films such as Old School, Wedding Crashers, and The Internship, will be playing the role of someone whom The Rock says he and wrestling fans “know all too well.” He went on to describe this wrestler as a 1980s wrestler who “squandered his money and opportunities because he didn’t have the capacity to handle his fame,” but has since cleaned up his act and “owned (up to his) past actions.”
The identity of this ’80s wrestler was not mentioned in The Rock’s Instagram post yesterday, but Den of Geek wrote that based on the clues dropped by “The People’s Champion” in his post, and based on the wrestler’s history with the Bevis/Knight wrestling family, Vince Vaughn might likely be playing WWE Hall of Famer Jake “The Snake” Roberts.
“Besides the fact that the intense, serpent-wrangling, former wrestling star and master of the DDT has a tragedy and addiction-addled biography that fits the bill, it is well-documented that Roberts – who fielded several live-in rehab stints, most productively with wrestling vet-turned-yoga-guru Diamond Dallas Page – lived in England with the family of WWE’s Paige for an unspecified amount of time.”
Like the aforementioned Nick Frost, Vaughn is better-known for his comedic roles, which should further reinforce the film’s status as a comedy-drama, to say little of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s run as an entertaining, top-level WWE Superstar. It should be interesting to see Vaughn play a colorful character such as Jake Roberts, and while the main cast appears to be set for the moment, The Rock did promise “more casting news to come” for Fighting with My Family, with production scheduled to kick off today.
[Featured Image by WWE]
