EXCLUSIVE: The company has optioned rights to the sports biopic Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud about New York Yankee starn and is talking to buyers on the Croisette.

AJ Ferrara and Amy Demner adapted the screenplay after Ferrara’s production company Magic City Pictures optioned the book rights from the 74-year-old Pepitone in 2014.  

Alexia Melocchi and Alexandra Yacovlef of Little Studio Films and Magic City Pictures will co-produce.

The story charts how the gifted Brooklyn-born Pepitone signed for the Yankees at 17 and fell into a spiral of self-destruction and sex addiction in the 1960s and 1970s.

Little Studio Films two most recent productions are the upcoming Ice Scream and Riding 79 and the company is collaborating with actor Blair Underwood on spy thriller Camelot’s Cousin.