A chauvinistic goofball attempting to undermine the female population might strike a little too much of a chord in today’s age, but a new sports dramedy depicts just that. The Battle of the Sexes, which captures the 1973 rivalry between Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) has now debuted its first trailer ahead of a fall release by Fox Searchlight.
Coming from Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine, Ruby Sparks), the trailer sells a relatively light tone when compared to the usually more intense genre of the sports movie. “This was a really important and serious time in the women’s liberation movement, and it was one of the first times that a political issue was acted out in the circus-like atmosphere,” co-director Dayton says to People. “It just felt incredibly relevant to today’s time.”
Also starring Andrea Riseborough, Elisabeth Shue, Austin Stowell, and Sarah Silverman, check out the trailer and poster below.
The electrifying 1973 tennis match between World number one Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and ex-champ and serial hustler Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) was billed as THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES and became one of the most watched televised sports events of all time. The match caught the zeitgeist and sparked a global conversation on gender equality, spurring on the feminist movement. Trapped in the media glare, King and Riggs were on opposite sides of a binary argument, but off-court each was fighting more personal and complex battles. With a supportive husband urging her to fight the Establishment for equal pay, the fiercely private King was also struggling to come to terms with her own sexuality, while Riggs gambled his legacy and reputation in a bid to relive the glories of his past. Together, Billie and Bobby served up a cultural spectacle that resonated far beyond the tennis courts and animated the discussions between men and women in bedrooms and boardrooms around the world.
The Battle of the Sexes opens on September 22, 2017.