By the ripe age of 27, the virtuoso card player Stu Ungar had won two back-to-back World Series of Poker titles, following a gin rummy career so successful that he reportedly had a hard time finding people to play him.
Seventeen years and one more World Series of Poker title later, he was found dead in a Vegas motel room of a heart attack with a small amount of drugs in his system after years of addiction.
Ungar’s dramatic life story has been told onscreen before, in the 2003 film High Roller (with Ungar played by The Sopranos’ Michael Imperioli) and in the 2006 ESPN documentary One of a Kind. But now, for the first time, a creative team has secured Ungar’s life story rights exclusively from his family and is promising to shed further light on Ungar’s journey.
The father-son writing duo of Eric Roth (the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Forrest Gump, Killers of the Flower Moon and Dune: Part One), and Geoff Roth (whose script The Way You Remember Me landed on the 2021 Black List) — are set to adapt Ungar’s story, with the intention of turning it into a limited series for television. The project is in development, with the writers planning to conduct interviews and research soon.
“We couldn’t be more excited to come aboard to tell Stuey’s story. He was as uniquely talented and mesmerizing a figure as they come — he’s simply one of one,” the Roths said in a statement. “We’re honored to be involved and grateful to his family for entrusting us to expound upon his legacy.”
In her own statement, Ungar’s daughter Stefanie said that she and her mother had long felt “protective” of the story. “We’ve never felt ready to share it — until now. When I met Eric and Geoff Roth, we knew we had found the right team to tell my father’s story,” she said in a statement. “Eric first met my dad in 1979 while watching him play cards in Las Vegas, and that connection adds a personal layer to this project. We’re excited to finally honor my father’s legacy and share who he really was with the world.”
Born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to a bookie father, Ungar was introduced to card games early and, in New York, earned the title the “Mozart of the card table,” according to New York Magazine. He went on to win (and also to allegedly lose) millions and become a major celebrity in Vegas. Just one year before his death, he earned his third World Series of Poker title, and is only one of two people to win the main event three times.
The Roths last collaborated on feature scripts based on the John Mayer song Walt Grace’s Submarine Test, January 1967 and Peter Heller’s novel The River for Amazon.
Ziffren Brittenham represented the Ungar family with the project, while CAA, Lenore Entertainment’s Adam Berkowitz and Jackoway Austen’s Darren Trattner represented Eric Roth. 3Arts’ Luke Maxwell and Luke Dillon Yorn Levine’s Ryan Goodell and Ashley Briskman represented Geoff Roth.
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