Actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Jim Carrey have signed up with New Line Cinema for a film adaptation of the musical Damn Yankees.
Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel (Parenthood, Fever Pitch, Robots) are set to write the script with Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the duo behind the Hairspray adaptation.
Damn Yankees focuses on Joe Boyd, a happily married middle-aged man whose devotion to a unlucky professional baseball team prompts him to make a deal with the devil to help the team win the World Series. He’s then transformed into slugger Joe Hardy in exchange for Boyd’s soul. The devil produces Lola, a gorgeous vixen, to seduce the slugger and seal his fate.
Carrey is set to play the devil and Gyllenhaal to play Boyd.
It’s the first musical for each actor.
Damn Yankees was turned into a 1958 Warner Brothers film that starred the stage play’s actors Ray Walston and Gwen Verdon with Tab Hunter playing Boyd.
Carrey recently starred in Yes Man and the upcoming film I Love You Phillip Morris. He will also star as Ebenezer Scrooge and several other roles in Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol for Disney.
Gyllenhaal will hit the big screen in David O. Russell-directed film Nailed, Brothers, and the Mike Newell-directed Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time for Disney.
By Tessa Petrocco (Source: Variety)