An upcoming film about the life of late Penn State football coach Joe Paterno now has a star, and a pretty impressive one at that. Al Pacino is officially slated to play the legendary coach in Brian De Palma’s upcoming Paterno biopic Happy Valley, which will be based on Joe Posnanski’s best-selling book “Paterno.”
Seems like a logical fit considering this will be the third time De Palma and Pacino have teamed up for a project (following ‘Scarface’ and `Carlito’s Way’) and Pacino has some on-screen football coaching experience, as he played coach Tony D’Amato in Oliver Stone’s 1999 football drama Any Given Sunday.
Plot details of Happy Valley are still a bit of a mystery but Posnanski’s book followed Paterno’s final years, as the winningest coach in college football history saw his career end in disgrace in 2011 with the child sex abuse scandal involving assistant Jerry Sandusky. One would imagine the film would follow suit.
