Dispatches from the Creation Wars

Phil Hellmuth Movie

Posted by Ed Brayton on December 21, 2006
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According to this industry source, they’re making a movie about Phil Hellmuth’s life, called The Madison Kid. He will be played by Hayden Christensen, who played Anikin Skywalker (Darth Vader) in the last two Star Wars movies. I have no idea what to say about that.

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Comments

  1. #1 Some Random Canadian
    December 21, 2006

    I just looked up Phil Hellmuth on Wikipedia. Frankly, based on his picture, I think Christian Bale would have been a better choice.

  2. #2 Aaron M
    December 21, 2006

    Given Christiansen’s whiny performances in the Star Wars prequels, I suspect he can capture the character, if not necessarily the appearance…

  3. #3 Andrew Wyatt
    December 21, 2006

    Christensen has some impressive acting chops. (Not that Star Wars gave him much of an opportunity to show them off.) Check out “Shattered Glass,” a film he did a couple of years ago about New Republic phenom and fraudster Stephen Glass. Besides being a very cool movie about the rise of Internet journalism (Forbes.com writer Adam Penenberg was the one who exposed Glass) and featuring a stellar cast–Peter Sarsgaard, Chloe Sevingy, Rosario Dawson, Steve Zahn–Christensen gives an great, memorable performance. I’m no poker aficiando, so I don’t know how well he will portray Hellmuth, but they could have done worse.

  4. #4 Jeff Hebert
    December 22, 2006

    Upon hearing that a film based on Phil Hellmuth’s life is planned, I can only reprise Anakin-as-played-by-Hayden’s ultimate scene:

    NNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

  5. #5 ben
    December 22, 2006

    Despite the fact that many of the people (Jackson, Portman, MacGregor, Christensen, McDiarmid, etc.) in the last couple SW movies have done excellent work elsewhere, it’s really hard to think of a true sentence that contains the words “last 2 Star Wars movies” and “acting” but doesn’t also contain at least 3 synonyms for the word “sucks.”

  6. #6 c.tower
    December 22, 2006

    Yeah, Lucas seems to have a special gift for getting really bad performances out of really good actors. (Sad thing is, his early films- THX 1138 and AMERICAN GRAFFITI- have some fine performances in them…)

  7. #7 Jake
    December 22, 2006

    That IS a weird choice. Isn’t Phil Helmuth like 6’9”? Are they going to put Aniken on stilts?