Netflix Casts Kofi Kingston, Various WWE Stars in New Family Movie

Netflix announced on Wednesday that it is teaming up with WWE Studios for a new live action family film titled The Main Event. The cast will reportedly feature numerous WWE Superstars, including WWE Champion Kofi Kingston, The Miz and Sheamus alongside Seth Carr (Black Panther), Tichina Arnold (The Neighborhood), Ken Marino (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) and Adam Pally (The Mindy Project).

The synopsis for the film reads as such, "After discovering a magical mask, an 11-year-old aspiring wrestler enters a competition to become the next WWE superstar." The film will be firected by Jay Karas, written by Larry Postel and is set to premiere on Netflix in 2020.

The film presents a new opportunity for Kingston, as the reigning world champion hasn't had many opportunities for acting beyond an appearance with the rest of New Day on an episode of Adam Ruins Everything and a voice acting role in Scooby-Doo! and WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon. Miz meanwhile is no stranger to acting as his acting credits include four installments in The Marine franchise, Christmas Bounty, Santa's Little Helper and Supernatural. Both he and Sheamus appeared in the family comedy Fighting With My Family earlier this year, which WWE Studios produced.

Kingston has been WWE Champion since WrestleMania 35, and is booked to defend it once again at Stomping Grounds on Sunday against Dolph Ziggler in a steel cage match. He discussed the importance of becoming WWE Champion in an interview with USA Today.

"It means a lot, especially from a representation standpoint," Kingston said. "It's always important for people to be able to watch WWE, especially because it's a global product, it's important for people all over the world to be able to look at the screen and see somebody who looks like them doing great things. And in turn, that inspires them to do great things. For me to inspire people who look like me to do awesome things, and they can look at the screen and say 'hey, I can do this because I can see someone that looks like me and he's doing it.'

"It's equally as important too that people who don't necessarily look like me and can also look to my story for inspiration, because the main thing is I struggled, you know? To get here it's been a long, hard struggle to make it to this point, and anybody out there, whether you're black, white, Asian, South American, whatever, you can look to my story and see I struggled to get here but I kept fighting through," he continued. "I didn't give up, I didn't take no for an answer, and I did it. It took me a long time to do it, but I did it. Anything is possible for anybody if they work hard enough."

Photo: Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images