Cycling stars light up the silver screen

‘Brainpower’, starring Tyler Hamilton, Tugboat, his recently deceased dog, and a bunch of Cervelo bikes, is due to be released at the end of 2004 and will be 40-minutes of pure pleasure for Tour fans.

The 2003 Tour was captured on large-format film by huge IMAX cameras. ‘Brainpower’ is not a film about the Tour itself, it’s an exploration of how the brain works, and specifically, how the brain deals with pain, stress, and tactics.

There was plenty of that on show at the 2004 Tour de France, and it was witnessed up close and personal by Frank Marshall. The producer of one of 2004’s top films – The Bourne Supremacy, starring Matt Damon – Marshall is said, by teenhollywood.com and other movie news sites, to have signed Damon to play Lance Armstrong in a movie due for possible release in 2006.

Damon will be put through a punishing training regime to play the cancer survivor and cycling superstar.

Let’s hope the film has more funding success than ‘The Flying Scotsman’, a planned £3.3m biopic about Graeme Obree. Trainspotting-star Jonny Lee Miller, Steven Berkoff and Bob Hoskins were due to start filming the pro-bike Scot-flick in the autumn of 2002 but just days before the cameras started rolling the American co-producer keeled over and died, leaving a hole in the movie’s budget, killing it.

Jonny Lee Miller prepared for his role as Obree by training at the Manchester velodrome. Will Matt Damon ride up the Col de la Madone in France? In the rain?

The film should be more great brand exposure for Trek.