Miles Teller Is a Boxer on the Comeback Trail in First 'Bleed for This' Trailer
Vinny “The Pazmanian Devil” Pazienza was a five-time world boxing champion who held titles in the lightweight, light middleweight, and super middleweight classes. Even when he broke his neck in a 1991 car crash, and was told by doctors that he’d never fight again, Pazienza refused to quit, returning to the ring 13 months later to win yet another belt. It’s a true story of athletic courage and perseverance, a sports fairy tale in real life. His story is getting the big-screen treatment come this November; watch the first trailer above.
Related: Miles Teller on ‘Whiplash,’ ‘Divergent’ Backlash, and Bleeding for His Art
Starring a ferocious-looking, physically ripped Miles Teller (Whiplash) as Pazienza, and directed by Boiler Room’s Ben Younger, Bleed for This has ostensibly been cast in a familiar rise-fall-rise mold: Pazienza sees his fame-and-fortune dreams obliterated by a head-on vehicular collision, then struggles to defy the odds — and the protestations of his family, friends, doctors, and trainer Kevin Rooney (a bald, pudgy Aaron Eckhart) — by strapping on the gloves again. The sheer audacity of the man’s amazing comeback, much of it apparently accomplished while his head was screwed into a “Halo” brace, may have it poised to follow in the footsteps of 2015’s Creed as a boxing story turned late-season awards contender.
Related: That Dazzling Boxing Sequence in ‘Creed’ Really Was One Shot
Co-starring Katey Sagal, Ciarán Hinds, Ted Levine, Kimberly Howe, and Amanda Clayton, Bleed for This will be aiming for critical and commercial triumph when it answers the bell at theaters on Nov. 4.
Watch Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons in a scene from ‘Whiplash’:
