Bobby Fischer Gets a Brit-Flick Biopic

The life of the late chess-playing legend Bobby Fischer, who famously claimed that “chess is better than sex”, is to be immortalised on the silver screen. Kevin Macdonald, the Scottish director of The Last King of Scotland, has signed up to direct Bobby Fischer Goes to War, which will be co-produced by Working Title, the company best known for Brit flicks such as Atonement and Love Actually.

Based on the book of the same name by David Edmonds and John Eidinow, the film will focus on Fischer’s sensational victory over the Russian chess champion Boris Spassky at the World Chess Championship in Reykjavik in 1972, which came to symbolise the cold war stand-off between Russia and the US.