Chris Rattue: It's time for Anton Oliver - the movie

As book launches go, Anton Oliver's trip down literary lane has been a publicity triumph and should have given rugby food for thought about its potential on the big screen.

Rugby books are a dime a dozen but the failure to put a giant of the game on film has been a serious argument against the claim that it lies at the cultural core of this wonderful land.

We are forever left relying on the subject to tell us about the subject, without the benefit of a screen legend interpreting their life and sticking a few creative but enlightening warts on to his character or enhancing the heroics.

Films are where it is at.

Can you imagine where baseball would be in America if it weren't for The Pride of the Yankees, a film as famous as its central character, the humble and dying Lou Gehrig. More importantly, can you imagine where baseball would be without 27 Kevin Costner movies?

Film rules. Characters like Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb were fairly famous already, granted, but it would have been unthinkable for them to have escaped the larger-than-life Hollywood treatment.

How could we really understand British football and its supporters if it wasn't for Ben Hornby's novel-turned-film Fever Pitch. Up until then, it was just a load of catchy crowd songs and faded images of dodgy fans disrupting the British rail timetable more than it is usually disrupted.

Even David Beckham's place in history was secured properly only when they named a film after him. Bend It Like Beckham revealed that his surname alone hits the back of the net - like the lone handles applied to Pele, Maradona, Eusebio, Zico and all those other exotic chaps who had the ball on a string.

Roy Keane also deserves to be in this place, but will only do so when they make the film Kick Him like Keane. There in a nutshell is the power of film.

Of course we don't make a heck of a lot of films anyway, and sporting ones are especially rare. Maybe the one which came closest to nestling into the national consciousness was Goodbye Pork Pie, a sort of national car rally without all the Scandinavian visitors.

We might as well start somewhere with major rugby characters, and here's the golden opportunity, with a couple of feisty protagonists and the potential for stunning scenery.

So, like one of the great Hollywood dream sequences, this column can reveal what has and will take place.

The plot is fairly simple of course, with Oliver providing a light beer of hope among the All Blacks' boozy ways.

An obsessive antipathy towards Laurie Mains however will always threaten to bring the hero down.

The film will be set in Dunedin. The key task will be to cast the lead roles of Oliver and Mains.

Mains just has to be played by Sir Anthony Hopkins. Sir Anthony was rumoured to have come to New Zealand this year - as excitement over the book and talk of a possible film deal grew - to research the part and nail the accent by spending a month living with Mains.

Unfortunately, the great thespian needed to be winched to safety by a rescue helicopter after two days, but is still keen.

Mains had tried to counter the Oliver project by putting his own screenplay to Hollywood, demanding that Oliver Stone direct his movie. But Stone turned it down saying the plot contained too many conspiracies.

The producers of the Anton Oliver film are also confident that Ben Stiller will play Oliver. Stiller has that same hooded-eyebrow look and grinning twists to the mouth as the All Black hooker, although barring stuffing Danny De Vito under his shirt, Stiller may struggle to match the Oliver physique.

Not to worry. This is the movies.

The update on the other key film appointments are:

* John Mitchell: The leading candidates have struggled with the dialogue.

* Colin Meads: You can't have a New Zealand rugby film without Colin Meads. To be played by Colin Meads (who the hell else could play him - Michael Hurst is way too small and you can't have an American Colin Meads).

* Film's technical adviser: Norm from Cheers.

* Film score: The 1973 hit record Rugby Drinking Songs.

* Main set location: A Swedish fishing village. Peter Jackson has got the South Island booked out for the next 23 years, and Sweden is ideal because many of the extras already have 100 per cent woollen gloves and hats in sensible colours.

* A love interest for the All Blacks: At this stage the favourite is three pallets of beer, just ahead of Cameron Diaz.

The major hope is this project will start a film trend that will take rugby to its rightful place, still deeper in our hearts.