by Gill Pringle in Jeddah
British writer/director Rowan Athale is forevermore indebted to Rocky icon Sylvester Stallone for helping him realise his own dreams of making a boxing film, culminating in his drama Giant about ’90s British boxing icon “Prince” Naseem Hamed.
Chosen to open the fifth edition of the Red Sea International Film Festival [RSIFF] in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the film follows Hamed, portrayed by Amir El-Masry, from his working class roots in 1980s Northern England where he was taught by legendary Irish trainer Brendan Ingle, portrayed by Pierce Brosnan.
While Giant first premiered at the BFI London Film Festival in October, it was in Jeddah where the sports legend, aka Naz, first attended a public screening, bringing his whole family with him to RSIFF.
In fact, the former world featherweight champion would also bring his WBC belt, draping it around the British-Egyptian actor El-Masry, and saying, “Now you know what a real champion boxer feels like”.
If a slew of stars such as Vin Diesel, Michael Caine, Uma Thurman, Juliette Binoche and Kirsten Dunst graced the red carpet at Giant’s gala screening, then it was Stallone who was foremost on Athale’s mind – even if the 80-year-old action star wasn’t actually present.
The two men first met six years ago after Athale pitched the veteran action star with his script for a sci-fi action thriller set in a future where China owned the U.S.
The up-and-coming filmmaker even flew to Los Angeles and spent a couple of days with Stallone at his home in Beverly Hills. Together, they had sold the film’s script around the world before being shut down twice during the pandemic.
By then, Stallone’s series Tulsa King was in production, and Athale imagined their relationship was over until Stallone asked if he had anything else he was working on. Telling him his ideas for a boxing film, Stallone would reply, “I know a thing or two about those …”
“It turned out that Sly knew Naz and had been to his fights. He read the script, and told me he wanted to get involved, and help open some doors,” recalls Athale who was honoured when Stallone stepped in to executive produce Giant.
“How phenomenal is that?” grins the filmmaker when we speak after Giant’s Middle Eastern premiere at Jeddah. “Growing up, at one point I had a Rocky poster on my wall. I had a James Bond poster on the wall, and I had couple of magazine cutouts of Naz. So, it’s weird that I made a film about one with the other two.
“I fell in love with boxing and cinema at the same time when I was about 7 or 8 and then a few years later, I wanted to be a filmmaker. Everyone wanted to make a boxing film in the same way that you might want to make a crime film or a war film. You talk about it in those terms when you’re that young. And I always wondered what the film would be.
“And then, Naz walked into our lives when I’m 14 years old. And even though he’s Yemeni and I’m half Indian, he was from five miles away from where I grew up and we were all lumped in the same basket, so to speak,” says the Barnsley-born filmmaker.
As a local witness to Naz’s home-grown success, Athale was inspired.
“We didn’t go to same school. But it was only a few minutes away. And for him to become this superstar – not just the best boxer out of the UK at the time, but to transcend being a boxer into being a megastar was quite something.
“I saw him a huge amount. And the more I read about him and his tempestuous relationship with Brendan, I realised that was a hugely interesting story. And then, sometime when I was about 19, I knew I wanted to make a film about Prince Hamed, although I just assumed someone else would get there first,” recalls Athale, who made his directorial debut with crime drama Wasteland in 2012, featuring Timothy Spall and Vanessa Kirby.
If we’ve seen various flattering biographies of musical or sporting legends, then the filmmaker pulls no punches with Giant, and while he appreciated Naz’s cooperation, his objective was not to make a fluff piece.
“The principal point of a biopic is it can’t be to please its subject. Otherwise, you’re making a hagiography,” he argues.
“So, no, Naz didn’t contribute financially but he was very grateful that the movie was being made. He was very much like: ‘I’ll tell you what I think of it when it’s done’,” he says.
For El-Masry’s part, he underwent an intense physical and mental transformation to play Naz, the role demanding that he not only capture the boxer’s signature style and charisma, but also his athletic build and boxing form.
Describing the preparation as brutal, El-Masry trained up to 12 hours a day in a “no-frills” gym, starting workouts at 7am and committed to rigorous cardio, conditioning and pad work sessions, rapidly building the physique and stamina required for a featherweight champion.
But the training was not just physical. To embody Naz’s off-ring persona – his swagger, speech patterns, and mannerisms – he studied archival footage of Hamed, observing not only how he fought but how he carried himself outside the ring.
The process pushed him to extremes. While losing seven kilos, he even dislocated a finger during a training session. Yet despite the pain and risk, he persevered, determined to honour Naz’s legacy and present a performance that felt authentic rather than cinematic exaggeration.
Really a two-hander between El-Masry’s Naz and Brosnan’s Ingle, the former Bond star was at the top of Athale’s wish list when he received a phone call.
“We’d sent the script to him and, two weeks later, I’m in the supermarket, when I get a phone call from Malibu. And I’m in the vegetable aisle!”
Even more surprisingly, it was the tousle-haired handsome Brosnan himself who suggested prosthetics and a skull cap with a bald spot and thinning white hair.
“One of the first things he said was: ‘You know, I look how I look. I don’t look like a steel worker from Sheffield. We’re gonna need some prosthetic work to make that happen’. So, that was his insistence, not mine,” says Athale who counted on Brosnan to lead the set’s morale by example.
“What you often find with people, when you see them on Oprah and they’re wonderful – and then in real life, it’s a little bit different. But with Pierce, that charming, wonderful, lovely man is the same as what you see when it’s 2am when it’s cold and raining, and everybody else would be miserable.
“You don’t hear a negative comment from him, as long as you’re prepared. He wouldn’t want his time wasted but I don’t want to waste anyone’s time either, so we got along like a house on fire,” says the filmmaker.
Main Image Insert: Rowan Athale poses for the photographer at the Red Sea International Film Festival 2025 on December 05, 2025 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. (Photo by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for The Red Sea International Film Festival)
