ScreenwriterColin Welland and director Hugh Hudson, the team behind 1981 Oscar winner ChariotsOf Fire, are gettingback together again to make rugby movie Harder They Fall with John Daly, former Hemdale boss andnow running another new company Typhoon Entertainment, producing.

Former Welsh international rugby star Mark C Thomascreated the story and set up the project and will produce with Daly throughtheir respective companies Film and Music Entertainment and Typhoon.

Harder TheyFall centres on anAmerican football college star who returns to his ancestral home of Wales aftersuffering a horrific injury, only to recover and re-invent himself as a rugbyplayer.

The project isscheduled to shoot in 2005 in the UK, Europe and US.

"Sport provides us with some of the most unforgettabledramatic and inspirational moments in life," Daly said in a statement.

"With our team of talented film-makers we have a wonderfulproject on our hands and I hope the international and domestic cinema audiencewill fully embrace the film."

Despite beingcommonly regarded as the world's third most popular television spectator sportafter the Olympics and World Cup football, rugby has only featured prominentlyin 1963's This Sporting Life, which starred Richard Harris.

Since Chariots for which he was nominated for an Oscar,Hudson has failed to recreate the same magic with a string of underperformerslike Revolution(1985), Lost Angels(1989), My Life So Far(1999) and I Dreamed Of Africa (2000). Only Greystoke: The Legend Of Tarzan, Lord Of The Apes in 1984 achieved any level of successwith critics and audiences.