Shiloh Fernandez is to portray the five time world champion boxer Johnny Tapia in a biopic creatively titled JOHNNY. Fernandez previously appeared in RED RIDING HOOD (2011) and RED (2008), the awesome one with the dead dog and Brian Cox, not the Bruce Willis film. Eddie Alcazar is set to write and direct, and he seems like the perfect fit given that he recently finished a documentary base on the same man titled TAPIA. I’m not giving away prizes for titles today.
Johnny Tapia died earlier this year on 27th May, at the age of 45. Out of 66 professional matches, he won 59, 30 of which were by KO. Tapia seemed to live one of the most tragic lives you could imagine. His father was murdered before he was born, and at the age of 8 his mother was kidnapped, raped, hanged, and stabbed. Nobody believed Tapia when he said he had seen his mother chained to the back of a pick-up truck. She was eventually found and died 4 days later. That’s when Tapia turned to boxing.
This sounds like a very interesting life story to tell and hiring the guy who made the documentary should hopefully add a real sense of reality and heart to the piece.
Source: Entertainment Weekly
