It's going to star Al Pacino. This could be a good idea. After all, Pacino has played a football coach (Any Given Sunday), an Italian crime boss (The Godfather Trilogy), a very conservative man with very bad vision (Scent of a Woman), and he has played the Devil himself (The Devil's Advocate).
However he doesn't look much like Paterno. He certainly doesn't sound like him. Paterno's voice was very different.
No, there's only one man who can really play Joe Paterno: Joe Pesci. He's got the size, he's got the voice, and you know he's got the anger.
Of course, Pesci is from Belleville, New Jersey. It might be a small measure of revenge on ol' Ratface for a Jersey guy to make him look like the punk criminal that he was.