Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free
Chris Hemsworth will play Hulk Hogan in a new Netflix biopic.
The film will be directed by Todd Phillips and written by Scott Silver, with the duo having previously collaborated on the upcoming DC Comics standalone film The Joker . John Pollono (Stronger ) will also co-write with Silver.
A twelve-time world champion, Hogan was arguably the most popular wrestler in the world between 1984 and 1993, thanks to his heroic role in the World Wresting Federation. He also enjoyed an extensive acting career, beginning with his antagonist role in 1982’s Rocky III .
Born Terry Gene Bollea, he began his career in the late 1970s in the Florida wrestling circuit and, when he started in the WWF, he frequently squared off against Andre the Giant.
The film is set to focus on Hogan’s rise to fame and the origins of his “Hulkster” and “Hulkamania” persona. Hogan himself will act as a consultant on the project, alongside serving as executive producer.
Show all 10 1 /10The Greatest Oscar Injustices Ever The Greatest Oscar Injustices Ever How Green Was My Valley Beat : Citizen Kane to Best Picture, Best Director and Best Cinematography, 1941
It takes a bit of searching these days to find someone who has a) seen John Ford’s Welsh melodrama How Green Was My Valley and b) did not do so out of a morbid curiosity to understand what it had that made it better than Citizen Kane. Still, there are loyal fans in Wales where it is set, willing to overlook the somewhat shaky accents in recognition of its portrayal of the hard lives of coal miners and its generally affecting love stories. But this film didn’t have anything close to the seismic effect of Orson Welles’s masterpiece on generations of filmmakers that followed, and in retrospect is a bizarrely safe, sentimental choice.
Getty Images
The Greatest Oscar Injustices Ever Oliver! Beat : 2001: A Space Odyssey to Best Director and Best Art Direction in 1968
Credit where it’s due: Carol Reed’s take on the musical version of Oliver Twist is a largely peppy affair that isn’t afraid to dip into darkness where necessary to give Fagin and Bill Sikes their edge. But Stanley Kubrick’s film was – as must have been obvious even at the time – a towering achievement, depicting several million years of evolution. The good news is that Kubrick won an Academy Award for his special effects work on the film, his only competitive Oscar, but he was robbed of Best Director and his film of Best Art Direction.
Getty Images
The Greatest Oscar Injustices Ever March of the Penguins Beat : Enron: The Smartest Guys In the Room to Best Documentary in 2005
If more people watched Enron and fewer people watched fairy tales about penguins, the world would be a better place. Luc Jacquet’s Antarctic nature documentary features some stunning photography amid hostile conditions, but it is handicapped by a trashy, unscientific voice-over that keeps emphasising the family “love” that drives these birds – despite the fact that they only mate for a season and never see their young again, once they’re weaned. Alex Gibney’s look at the shocking crash of a Wall Street darling, on the other hand, manages to make dry financial matters feel vital and immediate, and avoids making cutesy claims that the Enron board just couldn’t help being motivated by a near-mystical devotion to money.
Rex Features
The Greatest Oscar Injustices Ever Crash Beat : Brokeback Mountain in 2005
Even Crash director Paul Haggis doesn’t think his film should have beaten Ang Lee’s delicate, tragic cowboy romance. And yet the Academy went for the fragmentary ensemble piece rather than the heartbreaker. Maybe they weren’t ready for a film about a gay couple; maybe the voters thought it was more “important” in some way to reward a film about race issues in LA (something close to their everyday experience that may have felt more immediate, perhaps). But whenever people gather together to moan about bad Oscar choices, this will be mentioned within the first five minutes.
Rex Features
The Greatest Oscar Injustices Ever Driving Miss Daisy Beat : Born On the Fourth of July, Field of Dreams, Dead Poets Society and the not-even-nominated Do the Right Thing to Best Picture in 1989
If you turned on TV one Sunday afternoon and found Driving Miss Daisy, you might think it was a cute, minor picture with some odd, awkward things to say about racism. If someone told you it's a Best Picture winner, you would rightly scoff. And yet it is, beating four films that have all aged considerably better than the winner. Worst of all was the failure of the Academy to even nominate Spike Lee’s blistering Do the Right Thing, which had to make do with a Best Original Screenplay nod and a nomination for Danny Aiello in the Supporting Actor category. Lee would not be nominated for Best Director or Picture until last year’s BlacKkKlansman.
Rex
The Greatest Oscar Injustices Ever The Greatest Show on Earth Beat : High Noon, The Quiet Man and the not-even-nominated Singin’ In the Rain to Best Picture in 1952
Another embarrassing choice: the Academy rewarded Cecil B De Mille’s circus extravaganza over Fred Zinnemann’s classic Western, High Noon, and John Ford’s Irish favourite The Quiet Man. Worse, they didn’t even nominate Singin’ in the Rain for the top prizes, presumably because it wore its excellence too lightly. The award for Greatest Show tends to be explained away as a sort of career prize for De Mille, but the irony is that he would go on to make The Ten Commandments just a few years later in 1956, which would in turn have made a much better Best Picture winner than Around the World in 80 Days, which beat it that year. But then the winner that year should have been The Searchers, so perhaps that doesn’t solve much.
Getty Images
The Greatest Oscar Injustices Ever Roberto Begnini for Life Is Beautiful Beat : Edward Norton for American History X, Tom Hanks for Saving Private Ryan to Best Actor in 1998
As a film, Life Is Beautiful gets a lot of abuse, but it might have escaped unnoticed if its comic leading man had not won Best Actor at the Oscars and clambered over several rows of the most expensive audience in the world to collect his prize. It’s not a terrible performance, but it’s not even the best Second World War-set performance that year – see Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan, and tip your hat to The Thin Red Line along the way. The winner, however, should probably have been Edward Norton on terrifying, terrific form in American History X.
Rex Features
The Greatest Oscar Injustices Ever Peter Pau for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Beat : Roger Deakins for O Brother, Where Are Thou? to Best Cinematography in 2000
This is not to say that Peter Pau didn’t do beautiful things with Ang Lee’s wuxia epic. But Roger Deakins did pioneering work on the Coens’ O Brother, transferring the whole film to a “digital intermediate” to process and change the colours of the movie to give it a sepia tone. His process became a new Hollywood standard and led to two decades of highly stylised, carefully coloured digital films. In retrospect, his was the greater innovation – and an award in 2000 would have saved the Academy nearly two embarrassing decades of not having given Roger Deakins a cinematography Oscar.
Rex Features
The Greatest Oscar Injustices Ever Helen Hunt for As Good As It Gets Beat : Judi Dench for Mrs Brown and Kate Winslet for Titanic to Best Actress in 1997
Helen Hunt is charming opposite Jack Nicholson in this comedy drama, but even at the time viewers would have struggled to remember her character’s name (it was Carol, for the record). If the win was for supporting actress, the role might have passed muster, but as a lead it has far too little substance to stand against the likes of Judi Dench’s Queen Victoria or even Kate Winslet’s blockbuster action heroine Rose. Through no fault of Hunt’s own, it’s symbolic of the rubbish female roles that abounded – even at the Oscars – at this time.
Rex Features
The Greatest Oscar Injustices Ever Amy Adams Hasn’t beaten : Anyone yet, despite six nominations
It only took five nominations for Leonardo DiCaprio to go from bright young thing to “it’s his time”. Well, Amy Adams has had six nominations across Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, and she should have been nominated for Arrival as well in 2016, so we need to start an “it’s her time” narrative. She was nominated for Vice last year, but lost out, as predicted, to Regina King, whose performance in If Beale Street Could Talk was heartbreaking. It wasn't quite Adams's time yet.
Getty Images for Turner
Michael Sugar (Spotlight ) will produce, alongside Hemsworth, Eric Bischoff, Phillips and Bradley Cooper – the latter two will produce via their company Joint Effort.
Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events 
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies