Utah Jazz part owner Dwyane Wade has teamed up with friend and former teammate LeBron James to produce and star in a documentary about the U.S. men’s basketball team that won Olympic gold in the 2008, according to Variety. The film, which had the same director as “The Last Dance,” is coming to Netflix this fall.
The new documentary, called “The Redeem Team,” explores the 2008 team’s quest for redemption after the U.S. lost in the semi-finals of the 2004 Olympics.
“According to the documentary’s official logline, ‘The Redeem Team’ tells the story of the 2008 squad’s journey as they followed the previous team’s shocking performance four years earlier in Athens, where they took home a bronze medal after winning gold in the previous three straight Olympic Games,” Variety reported.
The article noted that the film, a collaboration between Netflix and the International Olympic Committee, will include “unprecedented Olympic footage and behind-the-scenes material” and interviews with Wade, James, coach Mike Krzyzewski and other stakeholders.
Although winning a bronze medal would sound pretty good to most countries, the U.S. team’s 2004 performance shocked the country. After that Olympics, “USA Basketball — the national governing body for basketball in the United States — changed its selection process for the Olympic team” in hopes of avoiding future shocking defeats, as the Deseret News reported in 2008.
Wade said in a statement to Variety that he’s excited for viewers to have a deeper understanding of what the 2008 “Redeem Team” was going through.
“Outside of winning and showing the world that we were still the most dominant, our other big challenge was changing the perception of what everyone thought about the NBA and USA Basketball! I’m excited for everyone to get an opportunity to go behind the scenes,” he said.
Netflix will release “The Redeem Team” globally on Oct. 7.