Jackie Robinson is getting a biopic

It's no surprise that Jackie Robinson will be the subject of a major feature film.

It's more of a shock that, almost 70 years after he broke the color barrier modern Major League Baseball, Robinson hadn't yet been the subject of a major feature film.

A few television specials aside, that egregious oversight is about to be rectified, by way of 42, a Robinson biopic due out in April 2013.

42--the name a reference to Robinson's jersey number--stars Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey, the executive who signed Robinson, Christopher Meloni as Leo Durocher, the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and Chadwick Boseman as Robinson in his first major film role. As seen in its trailer, the Brian Helgeland-helmed film promises the kind of warmly lit Americana goodness that one would expect from a baseball movie, plus the weightiness of a film honoring the trials surrounding a hard-won historical moment.