One of the main pitfalls any biopic needs to avoid is to stop short of acting as a hagiography of its subject, with many true-life stories glossing over the more unsavoury aspects in favour of painting them in a positive light. With that in mind, it’s very curious that Ronda Rousey is writing her own for Netflix.
That’s not to say she isn’t deserving of the treatment, considering her story is remarkable. Rousey became the first American woman to win an Olympic medal in judo after snatching bronze at the 2008 edition of the games, before becoming the face of UFC’s expansion into women’s fighting.
As well as taking part in the company’s first female bout inside the octagon, she became the first Women’s Bantamweight Champion, set a record for the most successful title defences at six, became one of the most recognisable figures in all of sports, and was the first woman inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame.
Beyond that, she dabbled in acting and appeared in both the Fast & Furious and Expendables franchises, before moving into professional wrestling and becoming a fixture of the WWE landscape. The biopic has been in the works for so long that it was initially based on Rousey’s memoir My Fight/Your Fight, but in the years since she’s penned a second book, with Our Fight also being worked into the screenplay.
Rousey was originally planning to star as herself, too, but that prospect appears to have been placed on the backburner after she focused her energies on screenwriting. According to Deadline, the fighter worked with her talent agency to hone her writing skills, and delivered the draft of her own biopic in the space of a week.
To obscure the identity of the person responsible, Netflix executives were given a script that didn’t have a front page so they “went in with no pre-conceived bias,” and the deal was struck shortly afterwards when they were suitably impressed that Rousey had scripted it herself.
It’s not often someone ends up writing a movie based on their life, but there must be something pretty special about Rousey’s debut as a screenwriter for Netflix to waste little time getting the project going again, after it was initially set up at Paramount in 2015 when Unstoppable, The Wolverine, and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes scribe Mark Bomback was tasked to hammer the narrative into shape.
