Cold Feet creator Mike Bullen has revealed his latest project is a film about the evolution of rugby league.
And the 62-year-old said it will be like “Full Monty meets Chariots of Fire ”.
The movie, written during lockdown, centres on the birth of the game in 1895 when 21 clubs met in Huddersfield to split from the Rugby Football Union.
Northern clubs wanted to pay players, often poorer mill workers and miners. Their southern counterparts were usually more affluent.
The northern teams were the bigger clubs with the better players but they couldn’t afford to take time off work on a Saturday to play.
Mike said: “It’s a classic underdog story and very timely as it tells how the working class fought against the establishment. Now is very similar to then where the balance of power is in the hands of the powerful.
“And just as those suffering in the gig economy and the cost-of-living crisis are bearing the brunt of it, that was the case then too. They decided enough was enough and to stand up for it.” Mike told how he picked up a passion for rugby league while making Cold Feet.
He said: “I was based in Manchester and went to see a game between Wigan and St Helens, and I was taken with it.”
The film will focus on West Yorkshire club Brighouse Rangers, one of the sport’s founder members alongside the likes of Super League teams Leeds, Hull FC, St Helens, Warrington and Wigan.
Mike said: “It’s about the power and privilege and how they had to overcome it. I looked into the wider history of the time, the social history and how it coincided with the birth of the trades unions and the Labour Party.
“The working class discovered they had a voice and they could use it.”
Mike is now pitching the film to attract funding.
Rugby league has been portrayed on the big screen before, with the 1963 classic This Sporting Life starring Richard Harris and 1998’s Up ’n’ Under.
Cold Feet ran on ITV for 60 episodes from 1998 and won more than 20 awards including a BAFTA. Cast included James Nesbitt, John Thomson and Fay Ripley.
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