Former boxing champion and legendary fighting figure Mike Tyson is set to join Sean Penn and Tye Sheridan in Black Flies, an upcoming dramatic thriller directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire.
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According to The Hollywood Reporter, Tyson will join the film in a lead role, and will play the superior office of both Penn and Sheridan, two New York City paramedics. Sheridan will play a first-year medic who arrives on the streets of New York eager to help people. However, as he and his partner, played by Penn, continue to have to make tough choices on the streets, his own desire to be helpful will be pushed to the limits.
Black Flies is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Shannon Burke, with Burke, Ben Mac Brown, and Ryan King all having written the script for the role.
“Black Flies is the story of paramedic Ollie Cross and his first year on the job in mid-90s New York,” reads the official synopsis of the novel. “It is a ground’s eye view of life on the streets: the shoot-outs, the bad cops, unhinged medics, the hopeless patients, the dark humor in bizarre circumstances, and one medic’s struggle to balance his desire to help against his own growing callousness. It is the story of lives that hang in the balance, and of a single job with a misdiagnosed newborn that sends Cross and his partner into a life-changing struggle between good and evil.”
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For Tyson, the boxer-turned-actor is next set to appear in the Indian sports action film Liger later this year, but hasn’t appeared in any films since 2019’s Hamlet Pharon. Tyson does have a history in the world of acting, however, appearing in films like The Hangover, the Scary Movie series, Ip Man 3, China Salesman, and more.