Actually, if I remember correctly, Ryan Gosling’s character in Half Nelson was more into smoking than snorting, but it appears that the team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck will play ball this summer (fastball, curveball and not speedballs) with a film that might become an unlikely addition to the subgenre of the sports-drama. Don’t worry kids. I don’t smell a feel-good, Disney-like rendition of America’s favorite pastime in the works.
Sugar will look at the promise and broken dreams of a Dominican baseball prospect plucked from his native country to play in the U.S. minor-league system. It focuses on Miguel “Sugar” Santos, a teenager who ends up far from home playing for a team in the Midwest after showing baseball aptitude in his native country. The project is described as a dramatic and cautionary account of the baseball scouting machine with a good-natured character at its center.
Variety reports that Paul Mezey's Journeyman Pictures and Jamie Patricof's Hunting Lane Films will produce the project – shooting is expected to begin in the Dominican Republic/Midwest & NYC this coming summer. This would mean that the project of It's Kind of a Funny Story goes temporarily on the backburner.
