Creed’s Scott Stapp to Play Frank Sinatra in Dennis Quaid’s Ronald Reagan Biopic

This year has one more curveball to throw before it ends. Scott Stapp, the lead singer of Creed, has been cast as Frank Sinatra in the Ronald Reagan biopic starring Dennis Quaid. The new film is expected to open in 2021 and is directed by Cats & Dogs 3: Paws Unite! director Sean McNamara. Principal photography is already underway.

Reagan is set to include a scene at the Cocoanut Grove during Reagan’s tenure as president of the Screen Actors Guild. Stapp will perform as Sinatra during the scene. “Sinatra in performance mode was an exercise in restraint,” Stapp told Billboard. “He had this steely, stylish swagger and his sheer presence commanded a room. I was excited to join the cast and blown away by the on-set attention to detail, style, and overall production.”

Aside from Quaid, the movie will feature Penelope Ann Miller as Nancy Regan, Kevin Dillon as Jack L. Warner, Mena Suvari as Jane Wyman, Lesley-Ann Down as Margaret Thatcher, and Robert Davi as Leonid Brezhnev. Jon Voight stars as a KGB agent who followed Reagan for decades. It was written by Howard Klausner and Jonas McCord.

McNamara previously directed Quaid in 2011’s Soul Surfer. “We are honored to have Scott in Reagan,” the director told Billboard. “Scott’s known for big, high energy performances so it was a thrill to see him shift gears to embody Sinatra’s contained charisma.”

Production on Reagan began in Oklahoma in September but was halted after there was a coronavirus outbreak among the crew. Filming resumed last month. “We have had some positive tests from members of our crew, so out of an abundance of caution, we have decided to pause production until we get the go-ahead to return to work from our medical team,” McNamara said in a statement in October. “The health and safety of our entire team is my greatest concern.”

This is not the only Reagan-related project in the works in Hollywood. Paramount Television Studios is working on Regan & Gorbechev, a limited series about the relationship between Reagan and the U.S.S.R.’s last leader, Mikhail Gorbechev. Michael Douglas was cast as Regan while Christoph Waltz will play Gorbachev. It will be directed by James Foley (Fifty Shades Darker, House of Cards) and is based on the book Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-Eight Hours That Ended the Cold War by Ken Adelman. The series will center on the 1986 48-hour summit in Iceland that is considered a turning point in the Cold War. It is told from the perspective of Reagan’s ams control director.