Daniel Cormier soon will add actor to his lengthy resume.
The recent UFC Hall of Fame inductee, a former UFC heavyweight and light heavyweight champion and current broadcast analyst, announced Friday he’s set to star in an upcoming TV series based on “Warrior,” a 2011 film regarded by many as the cream of the crop of MMA movies.
“I came from Lafayette, Louisiana to the (bright) lights of the Octagon and now I take on Hollywood!” Cormier posted on Twitter. “I teased this a while back but now it’s a reality thanks to @paramountplus and @lionsgate! I am truly honored and excited for this next chapter in my life!”
I came from Lafayette, Louisiana to the bring lights of the Octagon and now I take on Hollywood! I teased this a while back but now it’s a reality thanks to @paramountplus and @lionsgate !
I am truly honored and excited for this next chapter in my life! pic.twitter.com/7LAP933kmV
— Daniel Cormier (@dc_mma) July 15, 2022
According to Deadline, Gavin O’Connor, who wrote and directed the film version of “Warrior,” will turn that movie into a 10-episode series developed by Paramount+. Cormier will play one of four fighters the series will focus on. Golden Globe winner Gina Rodriguez (“Jane the Virgin”) has been cast in one of the fighter roles, as well.
O’Connor and series co-creator and executive producer Adair Cole are in the process of writing scripts and casting the other two fighter roles, Deadline reported.
O’Connor told Deadline the series will follow the four fighters’ lives outside the cage, and they eventually will fight each other. “We’re going to follow them through 10 episodes and hook the audience into their journeys.”
Cormier will play a fighter who is reeling from his wife’s death from cancer, leaving him as a single father with debt from her medical bills. Rodriguez will play the daughter of a boxing referee who is married to a muay Thai fighter and becomes a fighter herself.
Cormier won the UFC’s light heavyweight title in 2015. A little more than three years later, he won the heavyweight belt to become a simultaneous two-division champion. He retired in 2020 after a loss to Stipe Miocic in an attempt to regain the heavyweight title he lost to him a year prior. Earlier this month, he was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame. He’s a fixture at the broadcast table for the UFC in his post-fighting career.
“Warrior” the film starred Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton and Nick Nolte and earned Oscar and Screen Actors Guild nominations for Nolte for Best Supporting Actor. Hardy and Edgerton play estranged brothers who enter the same MMA tournament and ultimately have to fight each other. Nolte plays their recovering alcoholic father.
