Saipan

Saipan (2025)

Anger. Management.

On the eve of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, Irish captain Roy Keane forfeits his place in the squad at the team's preparation base in Saipan, following a heated disagreement with manager Mick McCarthy.

Date of release
2025-11-08
TMDB
6.0 / 10 (24)
Runtime
1h 30m
Genres
Drama, History
Director
Lisa Barros D'Sa, Glenn Leyburn

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Belfast

Saipan is a 2025 sports film directed by Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D'Sa and written by Paul Fraser. It dramatises the Saipan incident, an altercation between the Republic of Ireland national football team player Roy Keane and their manager, Mick McCarthy, ahead of the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

Production

The film is directed by Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D’Sa from a script by Paul Fraser. It is produced by Macdara Kelleher and John Keville for Wild Atlantic Pictures along with Trevor Birney and Oliver Butler for Fine Point Films. It is made in association with Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland and Northern Ireland Screen. Paul Fraser described the script "as two impossibly complicated egos unwilling to step down and look at the consequences".

In July 2024, Steve Coogan and Éanna Hardwicke were cast in the roles of McCarthy and Keane. Jack Hickey joined as Niall Quinn the following month. Harriet Cains was cast as Keane's wife, Theresa.

Coogan told Patrick Kielty on the Late Late Show that he had "a chat" with McCarthy before portraying him, saying he "wanted to make sure that if I was going to take part in it, it was a balanced depiction". When Coogan spoke to McCarthy over the phone prior to filming, McCarthy recalled ringing Keane on the eve of the World Cup, which became a late addition to the script. Principal photography began in Belfast in August 2024.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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