Sony Producing Documentary Profiling Armstrong's Tour Return

Sony Producing $3.5M Documentary About Armstrong's Tour Comeback

Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) is "currently financing a feature documentary chronicling" cyclist Lance Armstrong's return to the Tour de France, and it hopes the documentary "could prove as enthralling as any make-believe film," according to John Horn of the L.A. TIMES. The untitled documentary's director, Alex Gibney, who directed "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" and the Oscar-winning "Taxi to the Dark Side," said what interested him was the "story of his comeback -- his will." Gibney: "I wanted to understand Lance and what makes him tick. And the more I know, the more compelling the story gets." Columbia Pictures President Matt Tolmach added of the film, "It's about cancer. It's about getting old. It's about proving all the naysayers wrong. It's about a comeback. It unfolds in an isolated period of time. It's all the ingredients for a documentary." Horn notes Tolmach, a friend of Armstrong's, was "able to persuade" SPE co-Chair Amy Pascal and SPE Chair & CEO Michael Lynton that a "well-made movie could reach audiences far beyond the road-racing intelligentsia." Tolmach said of the $3.5M production, "As a small movie, it struck me as having enormous commercial potential." Horn notes the filmmakers have "broad access" to Armstrong -- SPE's six cameras "witness several of the unannounced blood doping tests that Armstrong and all tour racers must take -- and enough time with Armstrong to get past his well-practiced media patter." The documentary's crew also "covered Armstrong's races" in the Tour of California and the Vuelta a Castilla y Leon. Tolmach said that SPE "had not decided which of its releasing labels," which include Sony Pictures Classics, "will handle the film when it is completed, likely sometime later next year" (L.A. TIMES, 7/7).