Great White director Martin Wilson is hoping to take a bite out of India’s billion-dollar box office after the West Aussie filmmaker inked a deal to direct Wicked Wickets, a new cricket-themed film set in Mumbai.
The film will harness the power of Hollywood and Bollywood to tell the story of a Puerto Rican baseball star who is kicked out of the MLB for bad behaviour, only to find himself on an unlikely journey to redemption playing cricket in India.
“I’m a life-long passionate fan of sports movies like Moneyball, Jerry Maguire and White Men Can’t Jump, which succeed because of their well-drawn characters, heart and soul connectivity, and thrilling, exciting and dramatic plots,” Wilson told The West Australian.
“Wicked Wickets combines many of these elements; elements that struck me when I first read the screenplay and I could see the appeal of the film to reach a worldwide audience.”
Considering cricket and baseball have an estimated combined fanbase of three billion people, the potential of the film, if everything goes to plan, is immense.
An experienced team of producers will work behind the scenes to ensure that happens, including John Fragomeni (Children of the Corn) and Indian producer Pravesh Sahni, whose previous credits include the Chris Hemsworth action movie Extraction, Life of Pi and Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol.
Wilson’s own career has had more turn than Nathan Lyon on a dusty Indian wicket, after he followed the 2021 horror-tinged creature feature Great White with the award-winning Pieces, a poignant examination of mental illness.
Wicked Wickets was unveiled during the T20 World Cup currently underway in the US and Caribbean.