Article content

For the first time in the 94-year history of the Academy Awards, three sport movies have been nominated for Oscars in two different film categories in the same year.

Article content

King Richard, built on the Will Smith portrayal of Richard Williams, the enigmatic father and coach of tennis superstars Serena and Venus Williams, is one of 10 movies up for best picture in the Academy Awards ceremonies Sunday. Meanwhile, The Queen of Basketball, which pays tribute to women in sport pioneer Lusia “Lucy” Harris Stewart, and Audible, which is the coming-of-age story of Amaree McKenstry of the Maryland School for the Deaf, are finalists in the category of best short subject documentary.

Add in the best actor nomination accorded Smith, Aunjanue Ellis as best supporting actress nominee for her role as Williams’s wife Brandy, Zach Baylin for best original screenplay, Pamela Martin for film editing and Beyonce and DIXSON for best original song Be Alive, King Richard is the most-nominated sport movie since Million Dollar Baby earned seven nominations and four wins in 2004.

Article content

A total of nine nominations for three Oscar-nominated films in 2021 — that’s quite the bounce back for the sport movie genre over the past year.

King Richard, The Queen of Basketball and Audible are three resounding answers to the question of how the genre of sport movies responded after 2020, the worst year in the history of the film industry in production and distribution.

Despite the unprecedented revenue losses of 2020 when the movie industry limped along on approximately 10 per cent of the previous year’s ticket sales, sport movies have rebounded on the strength of the same kind of resilience shown by the major sports leagues, tours and associations in North America. From the paltry US$14.7 million earned by the sport movie box office leader in 2020 — the Ben Affleck basketball movie The Way Back — to the US$162.8 million spent on Space Jam 2: A New Legacy in 2021, it’s been a strong turnaround in one year, with no less than 23 theatre and digital sport movie releases through Dec. 31.

Article content

It is the first time in more than a decade that there have been three sport movies among the top-100 box office industry leaders in any one calendar year. Space Jam finished 26th among all theatrical releases in 2021 — one behind The Suicide Squad and just before The Matrix: Resurrections — while King Richard was 79th and in the vicinity of Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City and Nightmare Alley. The Kurt Warner biopic American Underdog was 100th at US$26.5 million.

In terms of revenue, Hollywood sport movies overall are still far off the pre-pandemic pace set in 2019, largely because of theatre lockdowns caused by the pandemic in 2020 and the proliferation of titles exclusively streamed to digital. Nothing came close this year to Ford v Ferrari, the auto racing extravaganza that was the biggest earner in 2019 with US$225.5 million in ticket receipts.

Article content

Yet in both quantity and quality, there is no question that sport movies this year demonstrated that there’s hope for the future, even as our media consumption habits change and diversify as quickly as Netflix, Amazon and other streaming juggernauts expand their presence in all facets of the business. Between the box office revenues of Space Jam 2 (US$162.8 million), King Richard (US$37.7 million) and the Kurt Warner biopic American Underdog (US$26.5 million), the top three sport movies grossed just shy of a quarter-billion dollars. That doesn’t include movie rentals and licensing fees paid by cable and web-based carriers, a revenue stream that as you’d expect showed explosive over the two years of the pandemic.

Article content

No sport movie served up more compelling results than King Richard, which according to the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes was strong with critics at 91 per cent and even more popular among moviegoers with a 98 per cent approval on the audience score.

Smith is outstanding in the lead role of Richard Dove Williams, Jr., a performance enhanced by make up that makes him uncanny in his physical resemblance to the father of the two tennis phenoms who have 150 WTA Tour career titles between them (122 in singles and 28 in doubles).

The casting of Smith arguably lends more likability and empathy to the character he plays than many who dealt with Williams in the tennis world would have felt in the 1990s, especially in the early stages of his daughters’ game-changing careers when there was considerable controversy around the methods that he deployed from the 84-page career “plan” that he championed for his daughters.

Article content

Give credit where credit is due: Everything the controlling father predicted in his aggressive promotion of his daughters — Venus as future world No. 1 and Serena as No. 1 and arguably the greatest women’s tennis player of all time — came true. Smith delivers this for the Williams family as the real-life Richard, now 80 years old and still living in Florida, is incapacitated by poor health after multiple strokes.

King Richard is the prototypical sport biopic in that it simply reflects a real-life story that couldn’t be written to be any more remarkable and inspiring if it were fictional. In addition to its seven Academy Awards nominations, King Richard wins 11 categories in the 15th annual edition of The Sport Market Movie Awards, including Smith as best actor in a sport movie, Ellis as best supporting actress and Jon Bernthal as best supporting actor, excellent as coach Rick Macci. Bernthal is the comedic valve for the movie, engagingly funny in his exasperation with the dogmatism and stubbornness that was synonymous with Richard Williams.

Article content

The Queen of Basketball wins for best sport documentary as it reintroduces the now deceased Stewart to the world as a three-time national college basketball champion and the first and only woman to be drafted into the NBA. The short subject documentary telling the multi-dimensional story of Stewart, who scored the first basket in women’s Olympic history at Montreal 1976, is being promoted and executive produced by Shaquille O’Neal and Steph Curry.

Anna Paquin for her role as Brenda Warner in American Underdog and Halle Berry in the mixed martial arts flick Bruised share best actress. Despite losing to Bernthal in the best supporting actor category of The Sport Market Movie Awards, Dennis Quaid deserves an honourable mention for two sport movie roles; first as Mason in the Born a Champion MMA movie and then as St. Louis Rams head coach Dick Vermeil in American Underdog.

Article content

They all contribute to a year of transition that reflects not only the resilience of the sport movie genre, but the hope associated with a post-COVID and postwar world, whenever that might be.

The 15th Annual Sport Market Movie Awards

Winners in the 15th annual edition of The Sport Market Movie Awards recognizing excellence in the genre of sport movies:

Best picture: King Richard (Will Smith, Tim White & Trevor White/tennis)

Best drama: King Richard (tennis)

Best biopic: King Richard (tennis)

Best documentary: The Queen of Basketball (basketball)

Best foreign: Baggio: The Divine Ponytail (Italy/soccer)

Best animated: Space Jam 2: A New Legacy (basketball) and Rumble (wrestling)

Box office champion: Space Jam 2: A New Legacy, US$162.7 million (basketball)

Article content

Best actor: Will Smith (King Richard/tennis)

Best actress: Halle Berry, Bruised (mixed martial arts) and Anna Paquin, American Underdog (football)

Best supporting actor: Jon Bernthal, King Richard (tennis)

Best supporting actress: Aunjanue Ellis, King Richard (tennis)

Best cast: Will Smith, Aunjanue Ellis, Saniyya Sidney, Demi Singleton, Tony Goldwyn, Jon Bernthal, Dylan McDermott, Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew, Danielle Lawson, Layla Crawford, Erika Ringor, Andy Bean and Kevin Dunn (King Richard/tennis)

Best director: Reinaldo Marcus Green, King Richard (tennis)

Best screenplay: Zach Baylin, King Richard (tennis)

Best cinematography: Christopher Kimlin, American Underdog (football)

Best editing: Pamela Martin, King Richard (tennis)

Best sound: Matthew Waters, American Underdog (football)

Best original musical score: Kris Bowers, Space Jam 2: A New Legacy (basketball)

Best song in a sport movie: Be Alive by Beyonce and DIXSON, King Richard (tennis)

Best soundtrack in a sport movie: Various artists, Space Jam 2: A New Legacy (basketball)

Marketing communications executive and sport business commentator Tom Mayenknecht is a principal in Emblematica Brand Builders and the host of The Sport Market on BNN Bloomberg Radio and TSN Radio nationally.