Former two-division champion and newly inducted UFC Hall of Famer Daniel Cormier is set to join the Paramount+ television adaptation of the 2011 film Warrior.
Slated to play one of the main combatants in the series, Daniel Cormier is joined by Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez who will also appear as one of the four fighters featured on the show.
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Gavin O’Connor, director of the 2011 film of the same name, is developing the series. In the original film, the story centers around brothers Tommy and Brendan Conlon. Played by Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton, the story focuses on the estranged brothers who enter a mixed martial arts competition. Eventually, the two meet one another in the finals with their father, played by Nick Nolte, in the corner of Tommy.
The film received critical acclaim carrying an 84 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 92 percent audience score making it one of the most well-reviewed sports films of all time. Nick Nolte received a Best Support Actor nomination at the 84th annual Academy Awards for his portrayal of Paddy Conlon.
“Over the years, I’d been approached by Lionsgate to do Warrior as a TV series and I honestly was never interested,” O’Connor said while speaking to Deadline. “Over the pandemic, I was in a different frame of mind and they said, “Someone came in with an interesting take, Adair Cole,” and I listened to it and liked it.
“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. We will have two women and two men, we’re going to follow them through 10 episodes and hook the audience into their journeys and they’re eventually going to face each other. Like in my movie, I tried to challenge the audience: Where are your loyalties? Where do your sympathies lie? Who are you rooting for? If I hook the audience into the stakes of each character’s life outside of the cage, what I call the life fight, then people are going to be invested in the stakes. That’s the heart and soul of the show.”
Gavin O’Connor Borrows From Reality to Develop Daniel Cormier’s Character
Discussing his original 2011 film, O’Connor stressed the importance of being authentic, citing his love for the sport of mixed martial arts and wanting to pay tribute to it in his own way.
“To me, I wanted to make my own love letter to the sport [of MMA] because I love it so much,” said O’Connor. “I was just hoping that I didn’t fail everyday.”
Somewhat borrowing from reality, Daniel Cormier’s character in the show will be a retired two-division world champion who is dealing with the loss of his wife to cancer.
Daniel Cormier is a former UFC light heavyweight and heavyweight world champion. He defeated Anthony ‘Rumble’ Johnson to earn the light heavyweight title at UFC 187. 15 months later, he would defeat general consensus heavyweight ‘GOAT’ Stipe Miocic for the heavyweight title at UFC 226. After completing a trilogy of fights with Miocic, Daniel Cormier retired from the sport. He was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame in 2022.
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