The Beautiful Game – The new Netflix film gets a cast

BAFTA and Golden Globe Award winner actor Bill Nighy (Love Actually, Shaun of the Dead) and BAFTA Rising Star award-winning actor Micheal Ward (Top Boy, Small Axe- Lovers Rock), will lead the cast of The Beautiful Game, a new Netflix Film from director Thea Sharrock, which commenced production in Rome.

THE BEAUTIFUL GAME follows a team of English homeless footballers, led by their coach Mal (Bill Nighy), who travel from London to Rome to compete in a global annual football tournament – The Homeless World Cup. At the last minute they decide to bring with them a talented striker VINNY (Michael Ward), but he must confront his own issues and once-promising past, in order to help the team win the cup and move on with his own life. In Rome just as in life, everything’s to play for.

Joining Bill Nighy and Micheal Ward are Valeria Golino (Morning Show, Rain Man), Callum Scott Howells (It’s a Sin), Kit Young (Shadow & Bone), Sheyi Cole (Small Axe – Alex Wheatle), Robin Nazari (Snabba Cash), Tom Vaughan-Lawlor (Avengers Infinity War, The Infiltrator), Susan Wokoma (Chewing Gum, Enola Holmes), Layo-Christina Akinlude (The End of the F**king World) and Cristina Rodlo (No One Gets Out Alive).

The film is directed by Thea Sharrock (Me Before You, The Hollow Crown), written by Frank Cottrell-Boyce (The Railway Man, 24 Hour Party People) and produced for Netflix by Blueprint Pictures’ Graham Broadbent & Pete Czernin and Anita Overland. Blueprint Pictures’ Ben Knight and Diarmuid McKeown serve as Executive Producers.

Mel Young, President and Founder of the Homeless World Cup Foundation said, “We are incredibly excited to be the focus of the upcoming film The Beautiful Game. The Homeless World Cup Foundation uses our annual tournament and the power of football as a method of tackling homelessness throughout the world. We have impacted the lives of over 1.2 million homeless people since 2003.

The Homeless World Cup is our contribution to tackling the homeless problem across the globe but there is so much more to do. We have proved just how powerful football can be when it is applied to a social problem and we will keep striving to do more. We hope that the work we do being told in The Beautiful Game inspires more people to join in and support future Homeless World Cups and together we can all aim to end homelessness forever.”

The Beautiful Game was developed in conjunction with Film4, for whom Ollie Madden and Daniel Battsek serve as executive producers.

The film is due out in 2022.