Mark Gordon Pictures has announced plans to produce a feature about Fallon Fox, the first openly transgender mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter.
Upon first entering the MMA cage, Fox hid her transgender identity when competing professionally. As she rose in the MMA ranks, Fox received a call from a journalist threatening to reveal her transgender identity to the world.
Instead, she chose to announce she is a transgender woman in an Outsports and Sports Illustrated article in 2013. She then faced an onslaught of transphobic abuse from the media and the MMA league along with igniting debate over whether a woman who was male at birth should be able to fight in women’s MMA divisions.
T Cooper and Allison Glock-Cooper will pen the script and Fox will serve as a consultant on the film which Gordon, John Papsidera and Bonnie-Chance Roberts will produce.
The project announcement comes as 34 U.S. states consider legislation that would ban transgender girls from playing on girls’ interscholastic sports teams.
Source: THR