Timothée Chalamet to Star in Josh Safdie’s Ping Pong Movie ‘Marty Supreme’

Samantha Bergeson
·2 min read

With Timothée Chalamet next playing Bob Dylan, he’ll next be trading singing for ping pong slinging.

The actor, who is portraying Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s “A Complete Unknown,” is in final negotiations to star in and produce Josh Safdie’s “Marty Supreme” about a professional ping pong champ, A24 announced on Monday.

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The movie is a fictionalized, original film written by Safdie and Ronald Bronstein, and official plot details are being kept under wraps.

Though as Variety is reporting, the film may be loosely inspired by the life of Marty Reisman, a ping pong champion who won 22 major ping pong titles from 1946 to 2002, and five bronze medals at the World Table Tennis Championships across his career. He also made history as the oldest player to win an open national competition in a racket sport while competing in the United States National Hardbat Championship. He died in 2012.

Reisman’s life was previously depicted on screen as part of a TV documentary “Fact or Fiction: The Life and Times of a Ping Pong Hustler” that was released in 2014.

Chalamet, Safdie, and Bronstein are all producing alongside Eli Bush and Anthony Katagas and A24.

“Marty Supreme” will be Safdie’s first film since “Uncut Gems.” Chalamet was previously rumored to be starring in Safdie’s yet-untitled Netflix film co-written with his brother Benny Safdie. Adam Sandler was set to be the lead alongside Megan Thee Stallion, with the film taking place in the world of sports memorabilia.

“Marty Supreme” will be Safdie’s second solo directing project after his 2008 debut “The Pleasure of Being Robbed.” Lead star Chalamet previously wrote a tribute to Josh and Benny Safdie in 2019, praising how the two filmmakers “pull none of [their] punches” onscreen.

“The New York directing duo have taken it upon themselves to keep alive the mantle of gritty and raucously interior inner-city films built by spiritual kin like Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee. The pair have continuously put out contemporary, raw and untethered work over the last decade, each film building on the traits of the prior, but never once sacrificing their innate grittiness,” Chalamet wrote. “You are best off simply expecting the unexpected.”

A24 is also producing Benny Safdie’s upcoming MMA biopic “The Smashing Machine” starring Dwayne Johnson as Mark Kerr.

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