ANOTHER INTERNET GAMBLING MOVIE IN THE WORKS

Posted 2/14/11 : A-list actors being lined up for a new production on internet sports betting
 
It appears that it is not just poker and blackjack that capture the attention of the movie-going public; a new film due to start shooting in April this year is based on an at times amusing book on internet sports betting.
 
The book, “Lay the Favourite”, appeared last year and is the work of Columbia fine arts grad and Fulbright scholar Beth Raymer.
 
It is a memoir of Raymer’s activities back in the early years of the millennium when, as a cocktail waitress, she became embroiled with avid gamblers who were also technology and math-oriented adventurers – a relationship that blossomed into a lucrative offshore commercial sports betting enterprise.
 
The Focus Films production has already attracted some impressive star-power, with actors Bruce Willis, Justin Timberlake and Catherine Zeta-Jones reportedly lined up for leading roles in the factually-based movie.
 
Director Steven Frears will take the action from Vegas to Curacao and Costa Rica once the production is underway.
 
"A day in the life of the office was really hectic," Raymer told NPR's Robert Siegel when the book launched. "September would be NFL, U.S. Open, the [baseball] pennant race, pre-season hockey, college football.
 
“There was always a lot of action in the office.”
 
Raymer recalls the nonchalance with which the sports books dealt with massive amounts of money – even recording bets of over $10,000 by scribbling them down on paper plates!
 
"The title's kind of ironic, I guess, because it's saying invest yourself in the outcome that appears most certain," Raymer reportedly said of her book, "and I and the people in my book have an almost pathological aversion to certainty."