Redford Returns to Baseball with Jackie Robinson Biopic

No list of great baseball movies would be complete without The Natural, starring Robert Redford. His best performance ever? Maybe not -- but it's certainly a lot of people's favorite. Because of that classic film, Redford is forever connected to our national pastime, and so it's a little exciting to see that he's about to produce another baseball movie: a biopic of Jackie Robinson.

It was Robinson who broke through Major League Baseball's race barrier when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Despite constant racist attacks by opposing players (and, at first, his own teammates), he went on to win the first-ever Rookie of the Year Award and to be a star player throughout his 10-year stint with the Dodgers. Redford will play Dodgers manager Branch Rickey, who supported Robinson from the beginning.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the project (which we talked about here and here) has the support of Robinson's widow (Robinson died in 1972), as well as Branch Rickey Jr. and Major League Baseball. It will be co-produced by ESPN Films, with Thomas Carter directing. Carter's last film was the true-life basketball story Coach Carter, and the three writers listed at IMDb have extensive biopic experience. The flick has all the hallmarks of a loving, faithful, not-too-controversial biopic, and that's fine with me.

This will actually be the second theatrical biopic of Robinson. The first, simply called The Jackie Robinson Story, was made in 1950, and starred Robinson as himself. (You don't see that very often.) Andre Braugher played him in a 1990 TV movie focused on his pre-baseball Army career. No word yet on who will play him in Redford's film. Any suggestions?