Fox 2000 is developing a British soccer movie with “The Fault in Our Stars” author John Green, Rosianna Halse Rojas and Temple Hill Entertainment.
The story centers on the AFC Wimbledon’s origins in 2002 and how, over the course of just a few years, a rag-tag group of underdogs managed to climb five tiers and become a professional team in the Football League.
Temple Hill, which produced the hit 2014 movie “The Fault in Our Stars,” and Green both have first-look deals at the studio.
Erin Siminoff and Molly Saffron are overseeing the project for Fox 2000, while Isaac Klausner is overseeing for Temple Hill.
The club’s origins stem from Wimbledon FC, one of the oldest and most storied British football organizations, being moved 56 miles north to Milton Keynes in 2002, despite massive opposition. In response, a group of die-hard fans decided to start a new amateur club from scratch at the bottom of the ninth tier — with the aim of the newly formed AFC Wimbledon always being owned by its fans.
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Green announced the news on his Twitter account:
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https://twitter.com/johngreen/status/715570835587743744
He also described the project in a post titled “The Greatest Sports Story Never Told” on Medium.
“Most of my professional life has been devoted to telling stories for and about teenagers,” he wrote. “But after my novels ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ and ‘Paper Towns’ were adapted into movies, I pitched the producers (Temple Hill) and studio (Fox 2000) of those movies a somewhat different story, about the greatest underdog sports story you’ve never heard, starring a bunch of middle-aged people with absolutely no athletic talent. And today, an agreement was announced, so I wanted to drop by Medium and explain why my next film project is about not American teenagers, but a lower league English football club.”
Green was an executive producer on Fox’s 2015 adaptation of his novel “Paper Towns,” which Temple Hill produced.
An adaptation of his novel “Looking for Alaska” has been in development at Paramount for several years with Rebecca Thomas coming on board to direct last June. Temple Hill is also producing.
