Kelly Dorman still feels a sense of awe when he remembers the first time his son, Cody, met the Thoroughbred that was later named for him.
The horse inched closer to Cody, who used a wheelchair and could not speak, and placed his head in the boy’s lap.
“It still amazes me to this day,” Dorman said.
The horse eventually became a champion named Cody’s Wish. And now, six years after that first meeting, the story of the special bond between the Richmond teen and the 2023 American Horse of the Year is being made into a movie.
Dorman said he hopes that same sense of wonder he felt that day and still feels will be translated onto the big screen.
“My biggest hope for this whole thing,” he said, “is for it to be displayed the way it’s already been written.”
It’s a story Dorman says was “put together by God himself.”
Cody died last year on the way home from cheering Cody’s Wish on to a win in his last race.
The rights to the film have been secured by director Jeff Celentano and producer Warren Ostergard, who worked together on the 2023 Dennis Quaid film “The Hill.” That biopic told the story of Rickey Hill, who became a professional baseball player despite a degenerative spinal disease.