By Alberto Amalfi | @Tennis_Now | Thursday, September 5, 2024
Picture credit score: Ellen Griesedieck
NEW YORK—Billie Jean King’s evolution from tennis participant to human rights icon is coming to ESPN.
ESPN Movies has formally greenlit an upcoming 30 for 30 documentary on the exceptional story of King, which is now in manufacturing with Ridley Scott Associates, and Story Syndicate, in affiliation with Elton John’s Rocket Sports activities.
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The legacy of one in every of America’s first ladies’s sports activities stars is unequalled, but few individuals know the true Billie Jean King: charismatic, mischievous, indignant, hopeful, cussed, and decided as ever.
In a press launch saying the mission, producers mentioned: “That is the unfiltered, untold story of how she broke the foundations and proved her critics improper, instructed in her personal voice and centered round one 12 months that brings all of it into focus: 1973.”
Former world No. 1 King mentioned championing equality has all the time been her primary mission.
“At 12 years previous I devoted my life to attaining equality for all,” mentioned Billie Jean King. “That promise to myself has taken me on a journey of a lifetime stuffed with pleasure, heartbreak, grit and guts.
“I’ve labored my complete life for ladies’s sports activities to take heart stage. At present, women and girls athletes live my dream. We hope to inform a narrative that can encourage future generations and make a constructive influence within the lives of others.”
Directed by Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmakers Liz Garbus (What Occurred, Miss Simone?, Bobby Fischer Towards the World) and Elizabeth Wolff (I’ll Be Gone within the Darkish), and from producers Dominic Crossley-Holland, Dan Cogan and Jay de Andrade, the documentary guarantees to shed new gentle on King’s life and her transformative influence on sports activities and society.
“The legacy of Billie Jean King is like none different,” mentioned Liz Garbus. “She is a generational athletic expertise, a pioneer in ladies’s sports activities, and a pacesetter within the struggle for equal pay and in opposition to discrimination in sports activities and society. Her bravery and her chutzpah are unmatched as she risked every part for everybody to have an opportunity at succeeding. Elizabeth and I are so excited to introduce Billie Jean to a complete new era of younger individuals who will see they’re standing on her shoulders and be impressed to maintain preventing for equality.”
“In 1973, Billie Jean King’s story wasn’t solely at a tipping level for personal legendary profession, however for America as properly with abortion rights, LGBTIQA+ inclusion, the unfulfilled promise of the Equal Rights Modification, and the struggle in Vietnam all at a precipice,” mentioned Elizabeth Wolff. “Billie Jean’s story is America’s story and Liz and I are thrilled to share the way it’s simply as sweeping and related as ever.”
Additional particulars on the mission, together with its premiere date, can be introduced, ESPN Movies mentioned in an announcement.
