Brad Furman, the director behind The Lincoln Lawyer and this week’s Runner Runner, has found his next project. Deadline reports that Furman will next write and direct Bigger, a biopic of Ben and Joe Weider, the sibling pair who created the Mr. Olympia competition and changed the face of professional bodybuilding. The film will be based in part on “Brothers of Iron,” the siblings’ 2006 memoir, officially described as follows:
In the depths of the Great Depression a scrawny, dirt-poor Jewish kid with a seventh-grade education picked up a barbell and got hooked on weight training. Building his muscles gave him confidence and hope for a better life. He pledged to make the great, transforming power of strength training available to everyone and to give bodybuilding all the glory it deserved. The kid, Joe Weider, enlisted his younger brother Ben in his quest, and together the Weider brothers accomplished things much bigger than Joe’s boyhood dreams. The little muscle magazine Joe started, working at his family’s dining room table, grew into a publishing empire. From a backyard barbell business, Joe and Ben built equipment and food supplement companies each as big as Weider Publishing. And they transformed bodybuilding into a hugely successful sport, organized under one of the largest and best-run athletic federations in the world.
Steve Lee Jones will produce through his Bee Holder Productions with Eric Weider attached to executive produce.
(Photo Credit: WENN.com)
