Ryan Gosling May Play Astronaut Neil Armstrong in Biopic For WHIPLASH Director

After he broke out with Whiplash last year, director Damien Chazelle became attached to direct a biopic of astronaut Neil Armstrong called First Man. The project has been around for a long time, bouncing around to different filmmakers, but it's looking like Chazelle might be the one to ultimately bring the story to the big screen. Deadline reports that he may have found a male lead, though it's still too early to confirm for certain.

Chazelle is currently making his Whiplash follow-up, a L.A.-based musical called La La Land, which stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, and if this report is to be believed, he's eyeing Gosling to play Armstrong in the new movie. This sounds like an interesting collaboration, and I'm very excited to see how these two work together in La La Land and beyond.

First Man is still being written by Spotlight co-writer Josh Singer, so no deal has gone through yet because the script isn't finished. James Hansen's biography First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong provides the basis for this movie, and the book traces Armstrong's history as a combat pilot, test pilot, and eventually the first man to walk on the moon. Gosling seems like he'd be a good fit for the part, and if you're anything like me, you don't know a damn thing about Neil Armstrong other than what his voice sounds like when he says "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Let's see if Chazelle and Gosling can change that.