Record-Breaking Boxer Claressa ‘T-Rex’ Shields’ Life Rights Nabbed for Feature Film

It’s about time we had a female “Rocky,” and who better to base such a film on than an actual record-breaking female boxer?

Universal and Michael De Luca Productions are teaming together to acquire the life rights of boxer Clarissa “T-Rex” Shields to make a sports movie based on her story.

At the 2012 Olympic Games in London, the inspiring 17-year-old fighter was the first American woman to win a gold medal in boxing, defeating Russian Nadezhda Torlopova. Her journey was captured in the 2015 documentary “T-Rex,” which screened at the Athena Film Festival. This film will be a narrative feature that follows Shields’ emergence out of distressed Flint, MI training gyms to the height of Olympic stardom.

As Deadline points out, “The aim is to make a popcorn sports movie with a female empowerment message in the vein of ‘Rocky.'” After the success of 2015’s “Rocky” sequel “Creed,” audiences are no doubt clamoring for a similarly inspiring sports story with a woman at front and center. It has, after all, been over ten years since Hilary Swank won her second Oscar in 2005 for portraying a boxer in “Million Dollar Baby.”

Shields noted earlier this year that her 2012 London win didn’t fulfill her dream of relocating her family out of the troubled city, which is now facing an incredibly disastrous water crisis. Therefore she hopes to repeat her win at the Rio Olympics later this year.

In the doc “T-Rex,”  Shields’ trainer, Jason Crutchfield, says, “A coach always wants a champion. Believe me. That’s why we coach. I just never thought it was going to be a girl.”

As Shields’ story proves, it’s time to start believing.

[via Deadline]