EXCLUSIVE: After setting the project up with Netflix and Chernin Entertainment, Ronda Rousey is now ready to tag in the person to take over directing duties for her feature film adaptation of her best-selling memoirs. Sources tell Deadline, Augustine Frizzell is set to direct the Rousey biopic based on both her memoirs, My Fight/Your Fight and Our Fight, which she co-wrote with her sister, Maria Burns Ortiz. Chernin Entertainment is on board to produce.
Deadline first reported the news of how this package came together starting with Rousey working in the WME’s story group department to learn how to about screenwriting structure and technique, eventually writing her own screenplay. After going dozens of scripts, she would ultimately pen the script all by herself in just seven days, blowing away her agents who couldn’t believe the script was from a first time writer. The script was soon taken to the market with Chernin moving fast to land a meeting to come on as producers. After that one sit down, they attached themselves as producers.
When it came to finding a director, everyone involved wanted a woman as a director to help tell Rousey’s story. After meeting several candidates, Frizzell came in and blew everyone away with her take for the film. A fan of Rousey long before she began directing TV episodes and feature films, sources say Frizzell had read both memoirs before she had even gotten the call to meet on it and knew right away this job needed to be hers. Not only is she a huge fan of Rousey but also in her spare time trains in Muay Thai and is well versed in the world the former UFC Champion came up in.
Netflix also had strong ties to the director having most recently set her to direct four of the eight episodes of the upcoming Netflix series The Boroughs. With the Duffer Brothers prodcuing the project, the series is a high priority for the streamer and would not of just given directing duties for so many episodes if they did not trust the person at the reigns. The series was created by Jeffrey Addiss Will Matthews.
The project was originally set up at Paramount in 2015 when the studio acquired the rights to her first memoir My Fight/Your Fight. Following a handful of regime changes at the studio, the rights would eventually lapse with Netflix ultimately jumping on them after Netflix exec — and long Rousey fan — Michelle Evans championed the project. What’s interesting here, given how much time has passed since the first memoir’s release, is that Rousey has since written a second memoir, Our Fight, which goes into even more detail about her life. Some of those new details include suffering her first loss to Holly Holm and contemplating suicide post-fight, her history with concussions that preceded her MMA career and her tumultuous relationship with her long-time coach, Edmond Tarverdyan.
As for Frizzell, the rising star in the directing ranks got her big break came making her directorial feature debut on Never Goin’ Back, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and was released later that year by A24. The film was nominated for the John Cassavetes Award at the 2019 Independent Spirit Awards. She would also direct the the pilot for the hit HBO series Euphoria. She also directed the Studio Canal/Netflix film The Last Letter From Your Lover.
Frizzell is repped WME.
