Will portray the five-time world champion.
Shiloh Fernandez (‘Evil Dead,’ ‘Red Riding Hood’) is set to portray boxer Johnny Tapia in a biopic of the former US boxing champion with Eddie Alcazar attached to direct.
With a script by Bettina Gilois (‘Glory Road’), the indie project will focus on the late boxer’s traumatic childhood. His father was murdered before Tapia was even born and his mother was kidnapped, raped and murdered when he was 8. Tapia turned to boxing when he was 9 and became a star in the late 1990s, winning titles including the WBO super flyweight and WBO bantamweight.
His childhood traumas led to a life of drug addiction and when he was 40, he was hospitalized after an apparent cocaine overdose, and his brother-in-law and nephew were killed in a car accident, reportedly on the way to the hospital to visit Tapia.
Titled ‘Johnny,’ the project was already was in development for months before Tapia passed away on May 27th.
Production is planned for early 2013.