Al Pacino to play Joe Paterno in upcoming movie?

“We’re in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And we can stay here, get the [expletive] kicked out of us. Or, we can fight our way back, into the light. We can climb out of hell. One inch at a time.”

Those words might still work in actor Al Pacino’s potential movie project. That now-famous inspirational speech was delivered by Pacino, who played football coach Tony D’Amato in the 1999 movie “Any Given Sunday.”

But this news possible film would be about Saturdays, not Sundays.

Word has emerged -- via Mike Fleming’s scoop at deadline.com -- that ICM Partners is packaging Pacino for a movie built around Joe Posnanski’s book, “Paterno.”

Pacino, of course, would play former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, who died in January of lung cancer.

Paterno’s death came a little more than two months after he was fired by Penn State in the aftermath of child sex abuse allegations against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, who was convicted and awaits sentencing on 45 counts of child sexual abuse.

Wrote Fleming at deadline.com: “This can either be a feature film or a cable movie, because Shakespeare himself would have had trouble coming up with anything this shocking, and because the issues here still boggle the mind.”

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