If you’re like me, you have two great loves in life: ski jumping and Christopher Walken. And when you find out that there’s going to be a movie with Christopher Walken about ski jumping, you can sure bet that the excitement is extraordinary.
That’s what Eddie the Eagle is going to be about- a British American sports comedy with Taron Egerton, Hugh Jackman, and Christopher Walken, about the 1980s Olympic ski jumper Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards. Directed by Dexter Fletcher and produced by Matthew Vaughn, Adam Bohling, David Reid, Rupert Maconick, and Valerie Van Galder, the film started shooting from March 9 to May 3 2015 at Pinewood Studios, London, and Germany.
Eddie the Eagle was the first ski jumper from Britain to participate in the Olympics. In Calgary of 1988, he lost both his competitions, but his story is inspiration because of the people involved. Jackman and Walken will play fictional characters in the film based on true people in Edwards’ life. Jackman will be Edward’s main coach, Bronson Peary, and Walken will be the mentor to both Edwards and Peary, Warren Sharp. The idea to make their characters fictional was because Edwards had numerous coaches in both Britain and in the United States and so the filmmakers thought it would be less confusing and more personal to go along the one coach route.
The film is set to come out April 29, 2016, and it will detail Edwards’ practice before the actual Olympic games, detailing how he had no funding, not even a budget to buy actual prescription goggles so he ended up wearing glasses under his goggles which made seeing a near impossibility.