Producer wants to turn Terry Fox’s story into a Hollywood film

Canada has a poor track record of immortalizing its heroes on film.

There's Bethune: The Making of a Hero, the 1977 movie about the Montreal doctor who became an icon of China's Communist revolution. But after that, I'm hard pressed to come up with one.

And when it comes to Hollywood films about Canadians, forget about it. Lots of Canadians work in La-La Land, but apparently there's no money there in telling our stories. That's what makes Los Angeles-based producer Kelly Slattery's plans for a big-screen bio of Terry Fox so intriguing.

The Metro Toronto native is planning to give Fox the full Hollywood treatment, with hopes of a big director and name star, according to the Vancouver Sun. Her unique proposal would also see the profits from the film go towards fulfilling Fox's mission.

Fox, of course, was the B.C. teenager who lost a leg to cancer and in 1980 began a cross-country run to raise money for cancer research. He headed west from St. John's in near anonymity, running nearly 26 miles — the equivalent of a marathon — every day.

By the time he was forced to abandon his Marathon of Hope in Thunder Bay, Ont., in September 1980 when his cancer recurred, his run gained national attention and raised $22 million. The epic run's premature end and Fox's death the following June was treated as a national loss.

[ Related: Terry Fox inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame ]

It might have stopped there but Fox's family carried on his mission via the Terry Fox Foundation, which to date has raised more than half a billion dollars through the annual Terry Fox Run to fund research projects.

A TV movie produced for Home Box Office, The Terry Fox Story, appeared in 1983, starring Eric Fryer as Fox and featuring legendary Hollywood character actor Robert Duvall. Television took another run at it in 2005 with Terry, which had no one you know in it.

Enter Slattery, daughter of an executive at the Adidas sports-equipment company, who told reporters this week she grew up surrounded by images of Fox. The company sponsored his run and her father has a framed letter from Fox requesting support.

Today she heads Therapy Content, a production company known mainly for documentaries such as Sound City, which was well received at the Sundance Film Festival this year, and Transcendent Man, about the life and ideas of futurist thinker Ray Kurzweil.

Slattery is well aware of her responsibility in bringing the Fox story to film, provisionally titled Terry Fox: The Feature Film, the Sun said.

“It’s a Canadian story. And I think when it’s a Canadian story, we tend to not share our heroes and our triumphs,” she told the Sun.

“That’s part of the fabric of Canada, to be humble about what we’ve done. I appreciate that, but I also think we should share this story. I think it’s really inspiring, and I think it can show the world what a real hero is. I think it’s time we do that.”

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Slattery acquired the rights to the Fox story and has the co-operation of the Fox family, CBC News said.

"We are excited by the opportunities offered in a theatre release to share Terry's vision and values with a global audience," Terry's brother, Darrell Fox, said in a Therapy Content news release.

"We are very thankful for Kelly's intentions of generating revenue for cancer research, which go hand in hand with Terry's Marathon of Hope intentions of reducing the suffering caused by cancer."

Slattery said she believes the movie could be produced for $10 million but is eyeing top talent for it. She sees young star Anton Yelchin (Pavel Chekov in the recent cinematic Star Trek reboot) as Fox, and Oscar-winning British director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire) behind the camera.

But she has to raise the money first.

Slattery is turning to Kickstarter, the crowd-sourced artistic fund-raising portal, to raise $250,000 in seed money. She believes that if the movie is made — with hopes of having it in theatres by the end of 2014 — it could raise up to $100 million in theatrical release, soundtrack and other marketing channels, the Sun said.