By Alberto Amalfi | @Tennis_Now | Thursday, September 5, 2024
Photograph 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 considered one of America’s first ladies’s sports activities stars is unmatched, but few folks know the true Billie Jean King: charismatic, mischievous, indignant, hopeful, cussed, and decided as ever.
In a press launch saying the venture, producers stated: “That is the unfiltered, untold story of how she broke the foundations and proved her critics mistaken, advised in her personal voice and centered round one yr that brings all of it into focus: 1973.”
Former world No. 1 King stated championing equality has all the time been her principal mission.
“At 12 years outdated I devoted my life to reaching equality for all,” stated Billie Jean King.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 total life for girls’s sports activities to take middle stage. Right now, women and girls athletes live my dream. We hope to inform a narrative that may encourage future generations and make a constructive impression within the lives of others.”
Directed by Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmakers Liz Garbus (What Occurred, Miss Simone?, Bobby Fischer In opposition to 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 impression on sports activities and society.
“The legacy of Billie Jean King is like none different,” stated Liz Garbus. “She is a generational athletic expertise, a pioneer in ladies’s sports activities, and a frontrunner within the combat for equal pay and towards 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 effectively with abortion rights, LGBTIQA+ inclusion, the unfulfilled promise of the Equal Rights Modification, and the warfare in Vietnam all at a precipice,” stated 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 venture, together with its premiere date, will probably be introduced, ESPN Movies stated in an announcement.