According to Screen Daily, Fox Searchlight will release Battle Of The Sexes on September 22. Emma Stone, coming off of her Oscar winning performance in La La Land, plays pioneering Grand Slam champion female tennis player Billie Jean King, who took part in a 1973 challenge match against Bobby Riggs.
For those of you who don’t know this story, Steve Carell plays Bobby Riggs, a former player who came out of retirement in 1973 — when he was 55 years old — after he claimed women players were inferior to male tennis players. At the time, he first asked Billie Jean King, who rejected him, as did Chris Evert. Riggs then challenged Margaret Court, who was 25 years Riggs’ junior and the top female tennis player in the world. He absolutely massacred her, with a 6-2 and 6-1 victory, which is how it came to be known as the “Mother’s Day Massacre.”
In her book, Pressure is a Privilege: Lessons I’ve Learned from Life and the Battle of the Sexes, King explained that when she watched Margaret lose, she knew exactly what she needed to do, and that was to face Riggs.
Billie Jean King, who became one of the greatest female players of the game, was only 29 years old when she accepted the challenge that Riggs had actually given to her first. The two met on September 20, 1973, then in the Houston Astrodome. The match was billed as The Battle of the Sexes. King ended up embarrassing Riggs with three straight victories, 6–4, 6–3, 6–3 and took home the $100,000 winner-take-all prize.
King has been an advocate for gender equality and was the founder of the Women’s Tennis Association, World Team Tennis and the Women’s Sports Foundation. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1990 and in 2006, the USTA National Tennis Center in New York City was renamed after King. Her younger brother is professional baseball player, Randy Moffitt.
I was eight years old when the Riggs/King match took place and I don’t remember seeing the match. Honestly, the way I learned about the Riggs/King match was thanks to Riggs’ appearance on The Odd Couple:
It is said that Riggs threw his match against King to get his mob debts erased, but that theory has been debated.
The Battle of the Sexes movie will be directed by Little Miss Sunshine directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris direct from a screenplay by Simon Beaufoy. Christian Colson, Danny Boyle and Robert Graf produce.
Bobby Riggs was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1988. Riggs died on October 25, 1995, at his home in Leucadia, Encinitas, California at 77 years old. It is said that Riggs was very close to Billie Jean King before he died.
Emma Stone and Steve Carrel have worked together before, in the movie Crazy, Stupid Love. The movie also stars Sarah Silverman, Alan Cumming, and Elisabeth Shue. Silverman plays Gladys Heldman, the founder of World Tennis magazine; she supported Billie Jean King and other female players who formed the Virginia Slims Tour in the early 1970s that was the precursor of today’s WTA Tour.
According to Deadline, the Battle of the Sexes movie “puts Searchlight in fine shape against two rival projects. HBO and Playtone just set Proof scribe David Auburn to write one that has Elizabeth Banks to play King and Paul Giamatti playing Riggs. Chernin Entertainment and Gary Sanchez are percolating the film Match Maker with Steve Conrad writing and Will Ferrell attached to play Riggs.”
In honor of National Women’s History Month, it’s awesome to honor Billie Jean King. Here are just some of the things that she has accomplished in her life — her ‘firsts’ according to World Team Tennis:
Billie Jean King Firsts:
First woman commissioner in professional sports history (World TeamTennis, 1984)
First woman to coach a co‐ed team in professional sports (Philadelphia Freedoms, WTT, 1974)
First female athlete in any sport to earn more than $100,000 in a single season
($117,000, 1971)
Only woman to win U.S. singles title on four surfaces (grass, clay, carpet, hard courts)
One of six inaugural inductees into the Court of Fame at the USTA National Tennis Center (2003)
First woman to have a major sports venue named in her honor (USTA Billie Jean King
National Tennis Center – 2006)
Follow Billie Jean King on Twitter at @BillieJeanKing
The movie will be released on September 22nd.
