The ninth Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival will “kick off with the gala world premiere” of “Play It Forward,” a documentary on former NFLer Tony Gonzalez and his family, according to Jonathan Kuperberg of BROADCASTING & CABLE. Pro Football HOFer Michael Strahan serves as exec producer on the film. The Tribeca/ESPN Sports event “will run from April 15-26 as a subset of the Tribeca Film Festival.” Among the other films featured is the Jason Hehir-directed documentary “Down In The Valley,” which follows Sacramento Mayor and former NBAer Kevin Johnson’s “quest to save the Kings.” Director Jonathan Hock's “Fastball” examines the “statistics and speed of baseball.” Spike Lee directs “The Greatest Catch Ever,” which takes a look at former NFLer David Tyree's "legendary catch in Super Bowl XLII” for the Giants. Former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura's “campaign for Minnesota governor” is examined in Zak Knutson's “Shock The World.” Katie Holmes' short film “Eternal Princess’ follows Gold Medal-winning Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, who scored a perfect "10" at the ‘76 Olympics (BROADCASTINGCABLE.com, 3/9).
COURT SESSION: DEADLINE.com’s Mike Fleming Jr. reported HBO and Playtone have "an untitled project" that has Elizabeth Banks playing Tennis HOFer Billie Jean King and Paul Giamatti as Bobby Riggs in the story of the '73 Battle of the Sexes. The film “will be exec produced by Playtone partners Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, along with Banks and her Brownstone Productions partner Max Handelman.” This “comes as a feature version of the famous match percolates.” That project, from Chernin Entertainment and Gary Sanchez Productions, is titled “Match Maker” and is based on an article from ESPN The Magazine's Don Van Natta Jr. In that version -- "which has Steve Conrad writing and Will Ferrell attached to play Riggs -- the connotation is that Riggs’ indebtedness to outside parties could have influenced the results” (DEADLINE.com, 3/10).
