Will Smith set to star as Venus and Serena Williams' father in biopic 'King Richard'

Will Smith is set to take on the role of Richard Williams in a forthcoming biopic, the man who battled the odds to make his daughters Venus and Serena world tennis champions, according to Deadline.

Smith will also be helping produce the movie thought his Overbrook Entertainment company, from a spec script written by first-timer Zach Baylin.

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Despite having no experience in tennis coaching, he devised a 78-page plan for the tennis career of his then four and five-year-old daughters.

Williams would take the young sisters to dilapidated public courts in Compton, South Los Angeles, where he fought with youths who had claimed the courts as their own.

After entering them into a tennis training academy, he pulled them out in 1995 and began training them again himself.

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Serena won the US open in 1995, while Venus won Wimbledon in 2000, Williams famously shouting ‘Straight outta Compton!’ as she did, a reference to the NWA song.

Smith is next up playing the genie in Guy Ritchie’s live-action remake of Disney’s Aladdin, due out in May.

It’s thought that he’s not signed up for another movie yet, having recently dropped out of the Suicide Squad sequel.