EXCLUSIVE: MindRiot Entertainment, the transatlantic indie behind Danielle Deadwyler’s Parallel, and the upcoming OceanGate pic Salvaged is moving into production on Trash Talk, a docuseries about NBA Hall-Of-Famer Gary Payton.
Filmmaker Scott Waugh (Expendables 4, Hidden Strike) will direct the series. Cameras are set to officially begin rolling Thursday in Nashville, Tennessee, where Payton will make an appearance at the AMA Supercross Championship.
Specific details on the series and its focus are currently under wraps, but MindRiot COO Randa Minkarah told Deadline that audiences “will get to see Payton aka “The Glove” — whose legendary athletic grit and tongue was showcased on Netflix’s The Last Dance – talk trash while on horseback with rodeo cowboys, fly fishing with producer John Dietsch (A River Runs Through It), and maybe even go head to head selling cookies with a bad-ass troupe of kids.”
MindRiot founder Jonathan Keasey and the company’s Head of Sports Content, Steven Banks Jr, told us they first cooked up the idea for the series during last year’s WGA strike when they were unable to work on fiction projects.
Banks Jr said Trash Talk will be “tonally comedic and educational as it’s a crossover between sports and culture where often overlooked competitions will bask in a shared light with a competitive spirit which aims to unite, as opposed to divide, in such globally fractured times.”
Payton, a nine-time NBA All-Star and nine-time All-Defensive First Team member played 17 years in the league, with stints in Boston, Milwaukee, LA with the Lakers, and the Seattle SuperSonics, where he began his career and largely made his name as a defense-minded point guard. He led the Sonics to the 1996 NBA Finals and ten years later was a member of the Miami Heat team with Shaquille O’Neal and Dwayne Wade that won the 2006 NBA title. Nicknamed The Glove for his defensive game, he is best known to NBA fans as a trash-talking, steal-making enforcer on the court. Before joining the NBA, he was an All-America at Oregon State and won two Olympic gold medals with Team USA in 1999 and 2000.
Alongside The Barracks Thief, MindRiot, which Keasey runs with co-founder Dr. Justin MacGregor and COO Minkarah, has a slew of buzzy projects moving towards production. The company’s slate includes the biopic Four The Yard about professional skateboarder Josh Swindell, the Oceangate biopic Salvaged co-produced by E. Brian Dobbins (Black-ish, The Blackening), and an adaptation of The Barracks Thief, a novella from award-winning author Tobias Wolff.
Keasey also penned Stephanie Laing’s upcoming feature Tow, which is now in production, with Octavia Spencer, Rose Byrne, Ariana DeBose, Dominic Sessa and Demi Lovato starring. He is repped by Michael Prevett at Circle of Confusion and David Matlof and Adam Vitable at Hirsch Wallerstein Hayum Matlof + Fishman.