Mike Tollin

Sports has been good to me, to paraphrase somebody who was talking about baseball.

Chico Escuela, yeah.

Well, I started doing documentaries, and then I worked for Major League Baseball, and then I came out here and hooked up with Brian Robbins, and we found a company.

It's a great place for storytelling.

You know, you've got winners and losers, good guys and bad guys.

You know what you're rooting for.

It's the best.

But that's part of the challenge, Adam, because you just assume you're watching a sports movie.

You've seen enough, like starting with Hoosiers, which is hard to top.

Right.

You assume the good guys are going to win at the end.

So we always adopted the approach that there's more drama in losing.

The first documentary we did, well, we didn't have a script, but the reality is the team that we followed lost in the state championships.

And then, you know, in hardball, the little kid gets killed at the end and they don't actually play the big game.

And in Coach Carter, they actually lose in the playoffs at the end.

So, yeah, Friday Night Lights had the same thing happen.

So, you know, we always like to say, yeah, we're making a sports movie, but it's about something else, and you've got to sort of hook into the characters and what's at stake.

But it's just really accessible.

It's a common language, and people love it.

We're working on a couple.