Timothée Chalamet Set to Star in and Produce Josh Safdie's A24 Film MARTY SUPREME Based on Professional Ping Pong Player

Oscar-nominated actor Timothée Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name, Wonka) is set to star in and produce the upcoming film Marty Supreme, an original movie from Josh Safdie and A24.

Sources close to the film say Marty Supreme is a fictionalized story, though it is also rumored that the film is inspired by professional ping pong player Marty Reisman.

Marty Supreme is written by Safdie and Ronald Bronstein, who produce alongside Eli Bush and Anthony Katagas. The film reunites Safdie with producer A24, which distributed his last two features, “Uncut Gems,” and “Good Time.”

Reisman, who died in 2012, was a table tennis champion who started his career as a hustler in Manhattan, playing for bets and prize money. He won 22 major ping pong titles from 1946 to 2002 and won five bronze medals at the World Table Tennis Championships.

At 67, he competed in the United States National Hardbat Championship and became the oldest player to win an open national competition in a racket sport. He was known as the “wizard of table tennis” and even opened for the Harlem Globetrotters with his ping pong comedy routine.

Chalamet has long been an outspoken fan of the Safdie brothers, writing an essay for Variety in 2019 about their Adam Sandler thriller Uncut Gems.

Chalamet wrote: “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.”

Since Uncut Gems, the Safdies have split up creatively to pursue solo careers. (They still produce other projects together via their Elara Pictures banner.) Benny Safdie bowed out of co-directing the brothers’ planned follow-up to “Uncut Gems,” which was set to also star Sandler in the world of sports memorabilia and baseball. That film is currently on pause. “Marty Supreme” marks Josh’s first film in the director’s chair since “Uncut Gems,” and his first solo feature directorial effort since his debut, 2008’s “The Pleasure of Being Robbed.”

As for Chalamet, he most recently starred in Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic Dune: Part Two. He recently wrapped filming on James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, in which Chalamet plays a young Bob Dylan.

via: Variety