Elizabeth Banks is set to don tennis whites to star as Billie Jean King in a TV movie about the athlete’s legendary Battle of the Sexes match in 1973 against self-proclaimed sexist Bobby Riggs.
Paul Giamatti will play Riggs in the as-yet untitled film, being developed by HBO and production company Playtone, Deadline reports. Tony-winning playwright David Auburn (Proof) is attached to write the script. Playtone partners Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman will be executive producers, along with Banks and her Brownstone Productions partner Max Handelman.
King was 29 and one of the top female tennis stars at the time of the match; Riggs, a former Wimbledon champion, was 55 and retired, but he boasted that he could beat any woman. King trounced him in straight sets before a crowd of more than 30,000 — the biggest crowd ever to watch a tennis match — at the Houston Astrodome. Another 50 million watched on TV.
“I thought it would set us back 50 years if I didn’t win that match,” King said later. “It would ruin the women’s tour and affect all women’s self-esteem.”
King also kept her lesbian identity hidden for what she felt was the good of the sport. She was married to a man at the time but had love affairs with women; she was outed in former lover Marilyn Barnett’s palimony suit in 1981. King retired from competitive singles tennis in 1983 and eventually came to terms with her identity. She has been an activist for women athletes and against homophobia in sports, and she has been in a relationship with Ilana Kloss for many years. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
The announcement of the HBO movie comes as a theatrical film on the subject is in development as well, Deadline notes. Will Ferrell is attached to play Riggs in Chernin Entertainment and Gary Sanchez Productions’ Match Maker; no word yet on who may play King. To be written by Steve Conrad, it’s based on Don Van Matta Jr.’s ESPN The Magazine article “The Match Maker: Bobby Riggs, the Mafia and the Battle of the Sexes,” which looked at rumors that Riggs threw the match for money. Both he and King always asserted that the match was on the level, and shortly before Riggs died in 1995, he said, “Billie Jean beat me fair and square.”
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