EXCLUSIVE: NFL legend Tom Brady is retired for good, we all assume, and now an Oscar-nominated screenwriting duo is tackling his legacy.
Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson, who wrote The Fighter – a film about a lesser-known Boston-area athlete – are working on The Patriot Way, a scripted limited series in development about the GOAT quarterback and his dominant New England Patriots teams. The pair is adapting Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge’s bestselling 2018 book 12: The Inside Story of Tom Brady’s Fight for Redemption.
The Patriot Way chronicles Brady’s improbable rise from sixth-round NFL draft pick to his half-dozen Super Bowl wins with the Patriots, the Aaron Hernandez, Spygate and Deflategate scandals and Brady’s battle of wills with head coach Bill Belichick.
The Maze Runner‘s Ellen Goldsmith-Vein of Gotham Group will produce.
“The New England Patriots dominated the professional sports landscape for 20 years,” Tamasy and Johnson said. “Our series will bring the audience inside Gillette Stadium, better known as Fortress Foxboro, to shed new light on the thrilling, historic come-from-behind victories; the dark side of success; and building a culture of winning at all costs.”
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The Patriot Way will mark the third collaboration between the screenwriters and authors Sherman and Wedge. They worked together to adapt Sherman’s book The Finest Hours, which became the 2016 Disney film starring Chris Pine, and Sherman and Wedge’s Boston Strong, which Tamasy and Johnson adapted into 2016’s Patriots Day, starring Mark Wahlberg and directed by Peter Berg.
“As journalists, we had a front-row seat for all the incredible drama that has unfolded both before and after the New England Patriots won their first super bowl [in 2001],” Sherman and Wedge added. “It’s a rich, character-driven story that probably will not be duplicated in our lifetime.”
We’ve asked the filmmaking team whether they require any image rights to portray Brady or The Patriots organisation.
Tamasy and Johnson are repped by Michael Prevett at Circle of Confusion, and Sherman and Wedge are with Goldsmith Vein, UTA’s Peter Steinberg and attorney Joel VanderKloot.