Filming underway on movie about legendary Fort Worth coach R.C. ‘Rocky’ Rosacker
A film about the late Fort Worth coach Lt. Col. R.C. “Rocky” Rosacker is currently filming in Central Texas.
Deadline reported this week that production has begun in Fredericksburg on “The Colonel,” which will star Clive Stranden (”Vikings,” “Taken” TV show). Stranden is joined in the film by Kelly Frye (”12 Mighty Orphans”), Sam Hunstman (”Will Trent”) and Peter Gerety (”Homicide: Life on the Street”).
The film is written, directed and produced by Tim Williams, a former student and player of Rosacker.
“Follows a decorated Marine officer forced into early retirement who in 1969 is recruited by a struggling Texas prep school to restore order among rebellious students through discipline and leadership,” the film’s logline reads.
Filming underway on film about Fort Worth football coach
Born in 1918, Rosacker grew up in Kansas and later quit college to enlist in the Marine Corps as U.S. involvement in World War II loomed.
Rosacker served through World War II and also saw action during the Korean War, according his biography on the film’s website. In 1964, a 46-year-old Rosacker was forced into early retirement after a physical determined he was not qualified to perform the duties of his rank.
A year later, Rosacker began his first ever civilian job as a history teacher in Oklahoma, where he stayed for a few years.
In 1969, Rosacker accepted an offer to be the athletic director at Fort Worth Country Day. Rosacker kicked a struggling athletic program into gear and saw success in football and other sports during his tenure at the school, which ended in 1981.
Rosacker went on to coach at Arlington’s Oakridge School for a few years and fully retired from coaching in 1985. In 1988, Country Day’s football stadium was named after Rosacker.
He died in 2001 in Fort Worth. Rosacker was 83 years old.
More on ‘The Colonel’
This isn’t the first project about Rosacker that’s seen the light of day.
A decade before cameras rolled on his feature film, Williams made a short film about Rosacker in 2016. A few years later in 2021, Williams made a documentary about Rosacker’s Country Day tenure called “The Colonel’s Playbook.”
In 2024, Williams told Paper City that he’s been trying to make a feature film about Rosacker for more than 15 years. The article mentioned that filming was meant to get underway that fall with Neal McDonough (”The Last Rodeo”) in the lead role.
As for why Stranden is in and McDonough is out, Deadline states that the latter exited the project some time ago for undisclosed reasons. No release date has been set for “The Colonel.”
