Directors of Black to helm Hollywood film about football match-fixing

The directors of the Brussels gang film Black, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, have been signed up to direct the American film The Big Fix, a Fox and Chernin Entertainment co-production. The crime thriller follows three main players in the true-life story of professional match-fixing on the international football circuit. The movie is loosely based on the 2012 article “All the World is Staged” in ESPN The Magazine.

Producer Peter Chernin also produced Flemish director Michaël R Roskam’s New York-based film The Drop. Chernin and Fox are now working to secure screenwriters to work with El Arbi and Fallah (pictured). The directors, who grew up in Flanders and met at film school in Brussels, have seen Black do well on the festival circuit and be released in multiple territories.

Black has won a number of awards around the world, including the Audience Award at the Ghent Film Festival, the Jury Prize at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and the Discovery Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. It recently won Best Film and Most Disturbing Film at the Ramdam Film Festival in Tournai, Wallonia, and the movie’s star, Martha Canga Antonio, was named a European Shooting Star by the Berlin International Film Festival.

Photo courtesy VRT