Jamie Foxx says he is moving ahead with a biopic on the life of boxer Mike Tyson and shared some selfies of himself bulked up in preparation for the role.
On Thursday, Foxx told producer Mark Birnbaum in an Instagram Live interview that the film will more forward (“definite yes,” he said) and he now refers to it as “Finding Mike.”
“Doing biographies is a tough thing. Sometimes it takes 20 years to get it done but we officially got the real ball rolling,” Foxx said. “I can’t wait to show people what it is.”
The idea dates back to at least 2014, when Tyson said in an interview that Foxx was hoping to portray him in a biopic. Foxx reiterated Friday that it’s “no secret” that he’s been pursuing the project for a while.
“People always ask me when is it going to happen?… things have finally lined up… A few months ago we started the journey… The first but biggest task is to transform the body,” Foxx said on Instagram. “We have a ways to go… But I am prepared to get there!”
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBnT19aBWJ8/
The hazy photos of Foxx in front of his mirror show him shirtless and flaunting his arms, and he says he began a regimen of pull-ups and push-ups a few months back.
Foxx, 52, is more than a few years removed from the boxer’s glory days, and even back in 2014, Tyson was saying the filmmakers would be looking to digitally de-age Foxx to look younger.
Foxx recently shared a convincing clip of him doing impressions, including one of Tyson, as well as people like a young and old Dave Chappelle, Jay-Z, Sammy Davis Jr. and Kermit the Frog, in which he further teased that he’d be working on the biopic.
Foxx most recently starred in “Just Mercy” and lends his voice to the Pixar movie “Soul,” and he’s an Oscar winner for the biopic “Ray.”