As Shohei Ohtani leads the Los Angeles Dodgers to this year’s World Series, Lionsgate Television has found it challenging to set up its scripted series about the phenom’s gambling scandal. According to one source close the project, acquisition executives are concerned that taking on the project might damage their parent companies’ current or future relationships with Major League Baseball.
Disney, Apple and Warner Bros. Discovery have media rights deals with the league worth hundreds of millions each year. Netflix and Comcast are themselves in advanced negotiations for their own pacts. Paramount, which has NFL and UFC rights, is also considered a natural home for baseball.
The team behind the Ohtani project, announced in May 2024, includes producer Scott Delman (HBO’s Station Eleven) and writer Alex Convery, who’s become a go-to for sports dramas since breaking out with the Ben Affleck-directed Air, about Michael Jordan and his Nike partnership. (Convery’s next project is a Tiger Woods biopic to be helmed by the director of the Venus and Serena Williams origin story King Richard.)
A previous report over the summer suggested that Starz, long a division of Lionsgate, was nearing a deal for the series. The network became a separate public company in May.
“We’re not going to discuss who we’re talking to and who we’re not, but we’ve never heard any concerns about offending Major League Baseball from anyone with whom we’ve spoken about the project,” says a Lionsgate spokesperson.
The Japanese superstar — nicknamed “Shotime” — is a rare two-way player (as a designated hitter as well as a pitcher) who’s now considered among the greatest to have ever played the American game, rivaling and perhaps even outshining the likes of Babe Ruth. His prowess has helped bring the Dodgers, with whom he’s signed to a 10-year, $700 million contract, back to the World Series yet again, this time against the Blue Jays. Game 1 will commence Oct. 24.
In early 2024, the sport’s biggest name became embroiled in legal controversy when his personal interpreter and close confidant, Ippei Mizuhara, was found to have wired large payments from the player’s account to a bookmaking operation then under federal investigation. Mizuhara later pled guilty to fraud for stealing more than $16 million from Ohtani’s account. Ohtani has denied ever betting on sports and was not implicated. But some skeptics continue to believe the interpreter may have taken a fall to protect the player or the league, which is still shadowed by both all-time-hits leader Pete Rose’s gambling saga in the 1980s as well as the Black Sox World Series conspiracy fix of 1919. (Both of those scandals resulted in lifetime bans for the players involved.)
Hard-edged scripted sports dramas do get made. Examples include HBO’s Winning Time, about the Lakers; FX’s inaugural season of American Sports Story, about New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez; and the Will Smith-starring Sony film Concussion, about the NFL’s brain damage crisis. But they remain rare, because leagues often have ongoing business with potential buyers, they control the intellectual property required to believably depict a narrative on-screen, and they can prompt significant backlash among loyal fans. Documentaries like those under ESPN’s 30 for 30 banner have more leeway because they rely on journalism’s protections and dictates, including source interviews and public records.
For now, this dramatization of the Ohtani scandal remains stuck in the Lionsgate dugout.
