The Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit director has teamed up with producers Gil Adler and Joel Eisenberg to develop the project, along with the former world heavyweight championship boxer's son, Joe Louis Barrow II.

According to Variety.com, the movie will document the boxers' two mammoth clashes with Schmelling at Yankee Stadium in New York, where the German fighter handed Louis his first career loss in 1936. A rematch was staged in 1938, when Louis got his revenge by delivering a knock-out blow to his rival in the first round.

Eisenberg says, "This project has been a passion project of mine for 25 years. It remains to me the greatest true-life story never filmed to its potential."

Louis, nicknamed the Brown Bomber, died in 1981, aged 66.

The as-yet-untitled project is being backed by bosses at the Kirmser Ponturo Group, the same company working on a biopic of American football icon Vince Lombardi.

It's not the first film to be made about Louis' life - Robert Gordon directed The Joe Louis Story in 1953, with fighter Coley Wallace as the boxing legend.