{"id":656969,"date":"2026-11-10T20:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-10T20:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/656969\/"},"modified":"2026-11-10T20:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T20:36:09","slug":"patrick-schwarzenegger-to-star-in-tennis-thriller-the-journeyman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/656969\/","title":{"rendered":"Patrick Schwarzenegger to Star in Tennis Thriller ‘The Journeyman’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tHe\u2019s had a long, slow climb to film stardom, but these days, it\u2019s never been better to be \u201cWhite Lotus\u201d actor Patrick Schwarzenegger<\/a>. \u201cThis is my first time home in six months,\u201d says the 33-year-old, who married his longtime girlfriend, model Abby Champion, last year. \u201cIt\u2019s really nice to have a bit of time here [in California] before I leave in three weeks for another six months!\u201d<\/p>\n

Schwarzenegger is flying to Puerto Rico to play the title role in \u00c1ngel Manuel Soto\u2019s crime thriller \u201cThe Journeyman\u201d from AGC Studios<\/a>, which is producing and fully financing the project. It\u2019s the first film he\u2019s ever done that revolves around his character, a struggling tennis player Schwarzenegger says is \u201cat his wits\u2019 end with his career\u201d when he\u2019s approached about fixing his matches. Leslie Grace plays his devoted fianc\u00e9e.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s been training for two months with a pro tennis player. \u201cI\u2019m used to how I grew up with my dad: a lot of weight training,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd now it\u2019s training to get less muscular looking, and a more lengthy kind of tennis build.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tWhile it seems counterintuitive to take muscles away from Arnold Schwarzenegger\u2019s son, the role still hits close to home: his mom Maria Shriver\u2019s fourth cousin is tennis champ Pam Shriver, and he was also at his wits\u2019 end with his career. After a decade of disappointing movies, he began looking for more prestigious TV and film projects, and found them in 2022\u2019s \u201cThe Staircase\u201d and 2024\u2019s \u201cAmerican Sports Story.\u201d \u201c\u2018The Staircase\u2019 allowed me to be seen a bit more seriously,\u201d Schwarzenegger says.<\/p>\n

That got him his breakthrough role on 2025\u2019s \u201cWhite Lotus,\u201d leading to a number of upcoming features with A-list ensembles. He\u2019s just returned from filming Mike Birbiglia\u2019s comedy \u201cOld Friends New Friends\u201d with Lucas Hedges in upstate New York for Focus. This followed two Toronto shoots: Yulin Kuang\u2019s 20th Century Studios adaptation of \u201cBeach Read\u201d with Andie MacDowell (the mother of Margaret Qualley, his co-star in Rachel Morrison\u2019s \u201cLove of Your Life\u201d from Amazon MGM); and S. Craig Zahler\u2019s crime drama \u201cThe Bookie & the Bruiser\u201d with Theo James. And his turn in Florian Zeller\u2019s psychological thriller \u201cBunker\u201d with Pen\u00e9lope Cruz and Javier Bardem will be seen in a December award-qualifying run. Alec Griffen Roth\u2019s 2025 drama \u201cBilly Knight\u201d with Al Pacino still awaits release after a festival run.<\/p>\n

The \u201cJourneyman\u201d team was \u201clooking for an actor who would believably be an athlete, [and who] you naturally root for,\u201d says AGC\u2019s head of film Zach Garrett. \u201cYou need that in a movie where somebody\u2019s making a deal with the devil.\u201d Stuart Ford, Bryan Haas, Mason Eways and Scott Franklin are producing the script, penned by married duo Bryan and Alexis Roberts with contributions from Bill Dubuque. AGC\u2019s Miguel A. Palos Jr., Garrett and Anant Tamirisa are exec producing; AGC Intl. is repping international rights at AFM<\/a>, and co-repping domestic sales with UTA and WME.<\/p>\n

Up next: Schwarzenegger is returning to TV for an entry in Hulu\u2019s \u201cGood American Family\u201d anthology as John Wayne Bobbitt, whose then-wife Lorena notoriously cut off his penis in 1993. And soon we may see him write, produce and act in his own series. \u201cI\u2019ve been writing a show with an incredible director that we\u2019re in the midst of selling right now, a comedic drama in the tone of \u2018The Bear,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019m that funny, [but \u201cLotus\u201d creator] Mike White would always tell me, \u2018Your comedy comes from you being so serious in such outlandish scenarios\u2019 \u2026 So fingers crossed that that happens! You just never know.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He\u2019s had a long, slow climb to film stardom, but these days, it\u2019s never been better to be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[67876,211691,44712,430,156,111,139,69,10910],"class_list":["post-656969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-afm","tag-agc-studios","tag-american-film-market","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-patrick-schwarzenegger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}