Daniel Cormier is ready to add another job to his growing resume.
The UFC Hall of Famer is in talks to star in the upcoming TV adaptation of the mixed martial arts film Warrior from director Gavin O’Connor, who is developing the project for Lionsgate and Paramount+.
Cormier is being cast as one of the main combatants in the series alongside Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez, who is being courted as one of four fighters being followed in the series.
O’Connor is developing the project where he’ll serve as showrunner while also directing the 10 episode series with Adair Cole also working as a co-showrunner and executive producer.
Released in 2011, Warrior told the story of two brothers — Tommy and Brendan Conlon — played by Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton, who end up joining the same MMA tournament with hopes of winning the grand prize. The siblings end up matched against each other in the finals with their father Paddy (Nolte) coaching Tommy along the way.
The film was met with overwhelming praise upon its release, culminating in Nolte being nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor.
“Over the years, I’d been approached by Lionsgate to do Warrior as a TV series and I honestly was never interested,” O’Connor told Deadline. I remember feeling different after the pandemic and was able to listen to Adair Cole’s interesting version. There was some really interesting stuff in there. I started sketching out characters, expounding what he had and gene splicing things and I called him after the holidays and said, ‘I’m in. I think I want to do this.’ We started figuring out the characters. The thing I said to Adair and Lionsgate which wasn’t in the pitch, is that this is about the life fight.
“I didn’t want to make something on fighting in a cage. That wasn’t the movie I made, it’s about a life fight. Two women and two guys will be joining us. We’ll follow their journeys through 10 episodes, hooking the audience in to their stories. Eventually they’ll face off against each other. As in the movie, I challenged my audience to ask: “Where are your loyalties?” What are your sympathies? Who are you rooting for? People will be interested in the stakes of every character’s lives outside the cage. This is what I call “the life fight”. That’s the heart and soul of the show.”
Back in 2020 when O’Connor was promoting his film The Way Back, which starred Ben Affleck, he spoke to MMA Fighting about what made Warrior such a compelling movie.
According to O’Connor, it all boiled down to authenticity and obviously he’s sticking to that formula by working with someone like Cormier on the TV version of Warrior.
“Verisimilitude is everything,” O’Connor said. It was as if you could smell it. Because I was a sportsman my entire life, I am able to smell things that don’t seem real or authentic.
“To me, I wanted to make my own love letter to the sport [of MMA] because I love it so much. I was just hoping that I didn’t fail everyday.”
O’Connor also revealed that Cormier’s character will be a recently retired fighter who captured both the heavyweight and light heavyweight titles but he’s now dealing with the fallout from losing his wife to cancer and being left as a single father facing huge debts from medical bills.
Cormier retired in 2020 from the UFC and has been working as both a color commentator and a YouTuber for promotion since. Now he’ll add leading man to his accolades as one of the lead stars for the new Warrior adaptation.
