It was just announced that Matthew McConaughey will star in a screen adaptation of Christopher McDougall’s book Born To Run: A Hidden Tribe, Super Athletes, And The Greatest Race The World Has Never Seen. Matthew Michael Carnahan (World War Z) penned the screenplay for the upcoming film, which will be produced by Mickey Liddell, Deb Newmyer and Lorenzo di Bonaventura.
Born to Run is described as an “epic adventure” that follows McDougall as he ventures off to Mexico’s deadly Copper Canyons in search of a tribe of the world’s greatest distance runners. Intent on learning their secrets of running hundreds of miles without rest in brutal terrain, the Tarahumara Indians flip his understanding of the art of running on its head.
The tribe’s superhuman athletic talent is combined with excellent physical health, both leading to the tribe’s ultimately peaceful existence. With the help of a mysterious loner Caballo Blanco, McDougall and a group of Americans, including a “star ultramarathoner, a beautiful young surfer, and a barefoot wonder,” train for a competitive fifty-mile race against the tribe through the center of the isolated Tarahumara country. Born To Run spent 178 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller’s list and, according to Deadline, helped launch the $2 billion dollar “barefoot running movement.”
McConaughy has been on a mind-boggling run as an actor in recent years, starting with a slew of great character indies in 2011-2012 like Mud, Killer Joe and The Paperboy. He won an Oscar for playing Ron Woodroof in Jean-Marc Vallée’s Dallas Buyers Club, and then went on to star in HBO’s creepy southern cop drama True Detective, followed by Christopher Nolan’s Sci-fi space epic Interstellar. He is set to star in Gus Van Sant’s upcoming suicide drama The Sea of Trees co-starring Ken Watanabe, Naomi Watts and Katie Aselton slated for release later this year.