Creed’s Scott Stapp to Play Frank Sinatra in Ronald Reagan Biopic
Legendary yarler Scott Stapp has been cast as legendary crooner Frank Sinatra in Reagan, an upcoming film about the last hateful idiot this country elected to be president based simply on his celebrity, Ronald Reagan.
Set to be directed by Sean McNamara, the visionary director of Cats & Dogs 3: Paws Unite and Baby Geniuses and the Space Baby, Reagan will also star Dennis Quaid (A Dog’s Purpose) in the title role; Penelope Ann Miller (Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story) as Nancy Reagan; Mena Suvari (The Dog Problem) as Jane Wyman; Robert Davi (Wild Orchid II: Two Shades of Blue) as Leonid Brezhnev; Kevin Dillon (Hotel for Dogs) as Jack Warner; and Jon Voight (whose testicles helped gives us Angelina Jolie) as Viktor Novikov. The screenplay was written by Howard Klausner (God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness) and Jonas McCord, who directed an episode of Tales from the Crypt in 1994.
Says Stapp in a statement:
“Sinatra in performance mode was an exercise in restraint. He had this steely, stylish swagger and his sheer presence commanded a room. I was excited to join the cast and blown away by the on-set attention to detail, style, and overall production.”
The Creed singer’s only previous acting credit is in a 2004 romantic comedy called 30 Days Until I’m Famous.
On the one hand, I think Stapp has about as much business playing Frank Sinatra as I do playing Otis Redding, and the mere fact that the filmmakers cast him in the role makes me wonder if they know who Frank Sinatra was.
On the other hand, I’m 95% sure few people will ever see this movie (Quaid and Suvari aren’t exactly box office gold), 98% sure it will be terrible (McNamara accepts jobs like he was a porn director — he’s credited with directing four features this year, none of which you’ve ever heard of), and I’m 99.9% sure this movie is going to be a laughable conservative hagiography of Reagan: Quaid, Davi, and especially Voight have all been vocal Trump supporters, Stapp threw his support behind Romney in ’12, McNamara also helmed a TV special with Roseanne Barr and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, one of the writers also wrote a movie about how God is real, and the producer, Mark Joseph, made a documentary last year called No Safe Spaces, which “contends that identity politics and the suppression of free speech are spreading into every part of society and threatening to divide America.” None of which screams “HONEST ASSESSMENT OF REAGAN’S LIFE!” to me. I mean, I’m just guessing, for example, that his administration’s completely (deliberately?) botched handling of the AIDS pandemic won’t be in the movie.
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Point being, I’m not mad about Stapp’s miscasting because I think this movie’s greatest value will be as an inadvertent comedy based in roughly as much factual history as your average episode of The Mandalorian. So I look forward to watching this and having a few good yuks.
No word yet on when Reagan will be released, but I assume it’ll be in 2021, before McNamara has to go off and make seven more movies no one asked for.
[via Collider]
