Just hours after Lance Armstrong admitted to doping, a biopic was announced with Paramount and J.J. Abrams producing an adaptation of Juliet Macur’s book Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong. Now Warner Bros. has a competing Armstrong biopic in the works, with Deadline reporting that Jay Roach (Meet The Parents, Game Change) is set to direct from a script by Scott Z. Burns (Side Effects).
The Warner movie has secured the life rights of Tyler Hamilton, who was one of Lance Armstrong’s teammates on the United States Postal Service cycling team. He was one of the first to testify that Lance Armstrong was using performance-enhancing drugs, which Lance strenuously denied at the time. The studio is also trying to secure rights to the life stories of several others involved in the scandal.
Charles Roven and Alex Gartner are producing through their Atlas Entertainment company. It’s likely only one of the Armstrong biopics will go forward, but we’ll have to wait and see which one it is.